Lock, Stock And Three Soja Gems
by Ministry Agent
Summary: Three perfect criminals. One perfect crime. Now all they have to fear is life... imprisonment.
1. The Arikaan Connection

A story involving would-be criminals; down-on-their-luck pirates; top-notch Galaxy Academy scientists; space aristocracy with a penchant for fine jewellery; Galaxy Police DCI's with severe chips on their shoulders; pink-haired Juraian fops with even bigger chips on their shoulders; female mob-assassins who've watched too much John Woo; alien gangsters who could have stepped out of the East End of Old London Town; ambiguous references to pop-culture space films and television series; made 'Mafioso' men who take orders from the Dogfather; an Earthling and his entourage of suitors (and fiancées); radical Bolshevik revolutionaries who couldn't organise a piss-up in a brewery; extraterrestrial Yardie posses; Accumulators of Extra-Legal Goods; a ghost; hip Earthling music...  
And that ain't the half of it.

And a note to you all; this is a comedy, but it's also a drama. Keep that in mind... (wink, wink)

**A/N Beta 1:-** Any footnotes [written as numbers in brackets (or parenthesis, if you're American), following a word, phrase, sentence etc. etc.] should be read posthaste. Missing such notes may result in complete misunderstanding of the fic or, in severe cases, death.

- - - - - - - - - - - -

* * * * *

**LOCK, STOCK AND THREE SOJA GEMS**

"A minute ago this was the safest job in the world. Now it's turning into a bad day in Bosnia."

* * * * *

**PROLOGUE:-**

At the apex of his power the space pirate Kagato commanded terrifying respect. However, five thousand years of plundering the most precious artifacts in the galaxy, along with his so-called _daughter_, Ryoko, and his monolithic ship, the Soja, eventually led him to an undignified end.

During a decisive battle he was killed, obliterated even, by the energy imbued in a young man (which was given to him by the Goddess Tsunami, naturally). The use of this energy, manifested in solid, was even enough to bisect the Soja... The resulting explosion scattered debris across the known universe, never to be found.

Or so goes the truth.

Of course, no one would release such honesty to the common public. Some things are too important to be admitted, and so a falsity was concocted, describing Kagato's death and the Soja's destruction at the hands of a massive GP fleet. No one dug any deeper than that.  
The case of the Ruins Buster, a file that had spanned five millennia, was finally closed.

Many drinks were downed at the Galaxy Police's local haunts. Museums brought their dusty old relics back into the light of day. People generally felt a little bit safer in their beds, knowing that Kagato was an ex-pirate and Ryoko was missing presumed dead.

But that's not the end of the story.

When he had lived, Kagato was a certified super-genius. Even so clever as to capture and detain his one time tutor, Washu Hakubi. Whereas Ryoko and Ryo-ohki were created by that self-same captive, the Soja was not.

The craft proved to be an enigma, even to Kagato's stupendous mind. Its propulsion and cohesion was given to it by three large gems, very much like the curious gems worn by Ryoko. Where they came from, no one knew. What they could do, no one knew. What they were... well, only a handful knew that.  
Alone, these gems were little more than curiosities. Paperweights (fifteen foot in diameter, spherical paperweights, yes, but novelties nonetheless).  
Together, however, they _were_ the Soja. And much more.

They had been under Kagato's nose all the time and he hadn't even seen them for what they truly were...

When the Soja was destroyed the explosion cast the gems away into the universe. 

Written in legend, spoken of in whispers, no one realised their true importance.

Until now...

(Epilepsy Warning : Fanfiction should be read at a distance in a well lit room)

* * * * *

**CHAPTER 1:-  
WOKE UP THIS MORNING**

There was a word for this.

He was very sure of that. 

It involved light.

And birds.

And embarrassing things involving the male anatomy.

Oh. And toothbrushes.

There was a word for it. It was simply a case of trying to remember what it was. He wracked his memory. God, it was on the tip of his brain. It was so simple, so elegant. It got across everything that it meant in the fewest number of letters. _Meatloaf_?  
Probably not.

No worries. It would come to him sooner or later. It was an 'M' word though, he knew that. Or, at least, he believed that he knew that. And why did his mouth taste like sandpaper?

Moon? Money? Mashed potato? Monk? Mastur- No...

Matrimony? Now that rang a bell. Not correct, but it certainly set off a little jingly noise in the back of his head.

Oh. That was a headache. Never mind.

Very carefully he reached his hand down and touched whatever it was that he was laying on. It was soft. Very soft and slightly bouncy. Somehow that didn't make him feel very happy, and he wasn't too sure why. _Mist?_ He pressed his hand forward gently. It ran along the soft thing beneath him and he felt it crease beneath his fingertips. _Mattress?_ Yes! That was correct. And an 'M' word!

Then his fingers stopped. They were pressing against something slightly firmer, but nearly as soft, a few inches in front of him. It was also rather warm. _Mango?_ He raised his hand gently and let it slide over the object. Very smooth, very soft. He traced up and down it with his fingers. _Majesty?_

The object moved beneath his digits and sighed a long contented sigh. Then it settled back down again.

_What,_ Tenchi asked himself, _Was that?_

Wouldn't you like to know.

_Who the hell are you?_ asked Tenchi's subconscious. He moved his hand the few inches back to himself.

Your super-ego, said the voice.

_My what?!_

Your super-ego, continued the voice. I'm sorry to say that your id is still passed out. You really shouldn't drink so much.

_Drink? I don't drink. I'm teetotal_, said Tenchi. He smoothed out the mattress' creases with his hand and attempted to bring the other extremity to bear. It wouldn't move. _Oh my God I'm paralysed_, he thought suddenly as he tried to get his left arm to traverse the barest fraction of an inch.

Not exactly, said the voice, you'll find it's much worse than that. Well, sort of.

_What do you mean? I'm not hospitalised am I?_

You keep dancing in the street like that and you will be! Don't you remember what happened at all?

_I remember brief flashes,_ replied Tenchi. He concentrated. _I see myself dancing. And doing karaoke. And... drinking saké?_ He took a metaphorical double-take. _Is that me?_

What? The guy in the police car? Yeah, that's you. Drunk and disorderly's quite a charge.

_Drunk and- GOOD GOD! What happened?!_

You're not going to like this. Not one little bit, said his super-ego in a voice that showed that it was probably going to enjoy telling it more than Tenchi was going to enjoy listening to it.

Yesterday was your birthday, laddo. The super-ego laughed gaily. Parties are great aren't they? I mean, yours certainly was. I wouldn't have missed it for the world! And I didn't either, because I was inside you all the time you were there!

_Amazing._

Yep. I'm surprised so many people turned up, seeing as how most of 'em think you're a geek. Perhaps it was the offer of free food.

_Am I the only person in the universe with an ego that hates me?_

No. Your ego likes you. I'm your super-ego. It's the difference between terrorist and freedom-fighter. Anyway, so you got really excited and drank all the rum punch. I expect that explains a lot, eh? Then your dad got chatted up by that girl from your art class... Mina Whatsername. That was pretty funny.

_Dad?_ Now there came a feeling in Tenchi's gut that the super-ego had to be lying. It wasn't just the fact that the same time Mina Whatsername hit on Noboyuki, would be the same time that Satan went to work on a snow-plough, but rather that he wouldn't have allowed it to happen. He may have been a diverse pervert, but he wasn't exactly over the top in his pursuits. If he didn't get rejected (or slapped in the face) after copping a feel of the girl's buttocks, he would probably have hid in his bedroom. Shyness died hard. _Okay..._

And when everyone went home and you went out. Ryoko and Ayeka followed, which is pretty weird because they so out of it, they couldn't think, let alone walk. I'll let you remember everything else for yourse-

_MORNING!_

What?

_That was the word I was looking for. MORNING!_ Tenchi smiled inwardly.

Anyway, I've got to go. See ya! called his super-ego. Its voice echoed for a few seconds, before disappearing into nothingness.

_Hello?_

Nothing.

_What? Nothing? What's that supposed to mean?_

Oh, sorry, said the super-ego, I was meant to vanish.

And it did.

* * * * *

This, of course, wasn't particularly enlightening to Tenchi. He felt like the sole survivor of a shipwreck, who had suddenly found that the island he'd been living on for the last six years had an Ibizan beach resort on its other side. Still swallowed in the inky blackness of shut-eyedness, he thought about his present situation.  
At least he knew the word he'd wanted was 'Morning'.

It was therefore morning, otherwise his mind wouldn't have made such a big thing about it. And it was also the day after his birthday. Or so his super-ego had told him. He found it somewhat unlikely that he had been arrested, because he knew that prison cells didn't usually have soft mattresses and breathing things in them. At least, not the type of cells he wanted to be in.  
The headache was still there and his throat felt like it had been used to wipe down sewage pipes.

He moved his head very gently, and stars exploded in the darkness. He found through various slight movements that he was lying on his side, his left hand side to be exact. His right hand trailed behind him, unfeeling and apparently unmovable. Perhaps it had been amputated, although he thought that the super-ego might have mentioned that. Or at least made fun of it.

His left arm, which was partially under his own body, moved forward again and touched the object that had so perplexed him. It was like a trunk, lying parallel to him, but smooth and supple. He prodded it for good measure. If he opened his eyes he'd know for sure, but his brain felt like tapioca and if he did open his eyelids he was worried that his eyes might fall out. His hand moved downwards along the object, and then stopped.  
The object swelled outwards gently in an arc and then moved back in again. Then it split into two.  
_Right_, said Tenchi's mind, _ I have a generalised hunch about this. But I'm not going to scare you just yet.  
_ He ran his hand back up along the trunk. There was a spherical outcropping at this end with hair. Very long hair. In fact, on closer palm-driven analysis, there was a lot of hair and some of it was put into two bunches. One of the bunches, which he followed with his hand, ran across his forehead and over behind him. It was very long. There was an 'S' word in here.

BLEEP was an 'S' word he could think of, but it wasn't the correct one.

He reached over the trunk and felt it gently. It was very... womanly. That made him feel better at least.

_Sasami?_

BLEEP NO! THAT WASN'T THE WORD! Oh god. It wasn't, was it?

He opened one eye.

Ayeka lay before him on the bed, her back turned to him. The covers were pulled up to the base of her neck and both rose rhythmically as she breathed. One branch of her extraordinarily long hair was draped across Tenchi's head, the other was beneath her. Tenchi's eye opened wider. He felt a familiar feeling in his nose.  
Because Ayeka was not wearing any clothes.

He opened the other eye and stared at her, his nose aching. _What_, he asked himself, _happened last night?_ He realised that his hand was still resting over her body and on her-  
His hand snapped back to his side faster than it had ever moved before.

Right. First thing's first. Get up and explain what happened. Say sorry. Commit ritual suicide. Hell, move to Los Angeles if you really have to.  
Actually, scratch the Los Angeles part. Committing suicide would do.

Except he couldn't actually get up because something was pinning his other arm to the mattress. Carefully, in order not to upset the headache, he looked over his shoulder. He didn't actually make it that far, because he saw the arm draped protectively around his chest beforehand. He looked at it for a long time. Long, slender fingers with gentle feminine nails. BLEEP BLEEP BLEEP!

He swallowed quietly in the morning sun that streamed through the window, and allowed his gaze to follow where the arm had sprung from. Something with cyan hair and snoring gently pressed against him. It was obviously a woman because her... her... well, hers, were pushed into his back.

"Oh. My. God," said Tenchi, very, very carefully. His head darted between the two naked women in the bed like a tennis fan watching Wimbledon on crack. Slowly, the head slowed down and he was staring at the white tiled ceiling above him. He watched it for a full ten seconds. Then he started screaming.

However, in his sweaty, near petrified state it came out as a low mewling. He turned his head toward Ayeka, still squeaking in his pathetic attempts at fear. She stirred in her sleep and rolled over to face him. The cover drifted down slightly. Tenchi started gagging and retching, his heart clutched in an icy grip.   
The girl in front of him opened her eyes tiredly and smiled. "Good morning Lord Tenchi," she whispered, then she closed her eyes again, the smile still lingering.

The eyes snapped open again. She blinked twice and then looked around from her laying position. "What's going on?" she asked gingerly, looking at Tenchi's body with a mix of wide-eyed alarm and wide-eyed amusement. Tenchi looked down at himself at the same time as Ayeka did, and found themselves to be in the most explicit form of undress. There was a sound like tearing silk as they both whipped the covers up to neck height and stared at each other in abject horror.

"Oh no," said Ayeka simply. Then she thought about that. "Oh no," she said again, although this time she didn't make it sound like it was a serious problem.  
"Oh no," Ayeka said for a third time and smiled.

"Oh no," said Tenchi, who sounded very much like he meant it. He watched as Ayeka moved a little closer towards him. "Oh no," she said for a fourth time, and waggled her eyebrows appreciatively.

"Oh no," repeated Tenchi.

"Oh no," said Ryoko, who levered herself above Tenchi's form. "What the hell did I drink last night?" She shook her head and looked down at the diorama beneath her. "Uh," she said and then reached out and poked Tenchi with a tentative finger. It failed to pass through the spectral vision, instead eliciting a sort of horrible gurgling sound from the throat of Ayeka whose eyes where bulging from their sockets. "Whoa," said Ryoko, "Whatever I drank, I want more of it."

"Ryoko!" shrieked Ayeka, sitting bolt up right in the bed, "What is this meaning of this?"  
Ryoko shrugged, "Damned if I know." She looked down at Tenchi, who had rolled over onto his back and had pulled the bedcover over his head. "But it's good." She grinned wickedly.

"No," Ayeka said. She pointed a finger. "You..."  
"We," replied Ryoko.  
"No, we... I mean, you..."  
"No what?" asked Ryoko, still smiling her wicked grin.  
"You didn't... do..." stuttered Ayeka. She stared at Ryoko suddenly, "No."  
Both women noticed a certain lack of something from the conversation. It was, they decided, Tenchi.  
Ryoko's amber eyes moved down from Ayeka and onto the lumpy mass of white bedclothes that Tenchi was hiding beneath. She bowed her head to it, the smile disappearing into a look of worry. "Are you okay, Tenchi?"  
"Lord Tenchi? Are you alright?" Ayeka joined in. She tried to fold back the lip of the bedclothes.

"Don't," said Tenchi.  
"What's wrong?" asked Ryoko gently. She too attempted to reveal the hiding form.  
"I'm naked," stated Tenchi's muffled voice, "And I'm in a bed with two women."  
Ryoko laughed. "Oh Tenchi! It's not that bad. Is it princess?" She looked at Ayeka pleadingly.  
Ayeka stared back at her with eyes that pointed out it would be better if he were in a bed with _one_ women. Whose name was, purely by chance, Ayeka. Then she sighed. "No, it could be worse."

"That's not the worst part," came Tenchi's voice again.  
There was a sullen silence from the two women. "Well, what is it then?" cajoled Ayeka.  
"We're in a department store."

The two women looked at each other. Then they turned their heads to look at the foot of the bed. The massive window that looked out into the street stared back at them, along with the twenty or thirty people who were watching in disbelief at the spectacle in front of them. A young man at the front of the crowd gave a cheerful wink at the girls and smiled a very large, very happy smile.

To say the crowd was surprised when the bustier of the two woman grabbed the hand that was holding the bedclothes down and the forearm of the other woman and then promptly vanished would be a bit of an understatement. But then again, stranger things have happened.

Just before Tenchi felt himself wink out of existence and teleport, his addled mind suddenly realised the 'S' word he was looking for. It was 'sandwich'.

* * * * *

**CHAPTER 2:-  
ONE OF THOSE NIGHTS**

The nights on Belatius VI are universally known as the most spectacular in the galaxy. That is because its nights are eternal. They last eighteen hours of its eighteen hour days and six-hundred days of the six-hundred days that make up its year. Due to an unfortunate nuclear incident in its past, it now rotated on its axis in the most curious way.  
Much like the Earth's moon, it would always have one dark side and one light side.

The light side was known (mainly because of its population's distinct lack of imagination) as Sun Side. With the planet being a good distance from the local star, it had the more than pleasant temperature of 98 degrees Fahrenheit. Air-conditioning was the chief export. Tourism and holidaying were the main money-makers. It was also home to some of the most famous celebrities the galaxy had seen, including the illustrious movie-starlet Aerie Relleh and the outer-rim explorer Zayo Orub'Dar-Ma the Third.  
On the opposite of the planet was the equally imaginatively named Dark Side. Here, the temperature was always 29 degrees Fahrenheit (except in those cases when it was lower), the buildings had perma-frost and the only people to stay were those too stupid or too poor to move. 

This endless midnight, lit only by neon billboards and streetlamps, was the perfect place for criminals, pirates and other members of the fraternal brotherhood of scum and villainy to engage in certain legally dubious practices.

The local police force (who weren't so stupid as to go wandering into Dark Side without very good reason and heavy gun-ship support) allowed it to go on, as long as nobody screwed over the affluent Sun Side, and so a sort of easy truce was kept. The cops kept Sun Side clean and the mobs made sure Dark Side had a swift, and rough, form of justice. People who did 'bad' were usually found at the bottom of storm drains or canals wearing rather heavy, rather square, rather concrete-like overshoes.(1)

It was not really the sort of place Grimm liked to spend his weekends.

As he stepped over the naked and prostate form of a man who had recently been relieved of his wallet, clothes and kidneys, he played idly with the blaster in the holster on his belt. Using the billboards, the streetlamps and the headlights of air-traffic as a guide, he maneuvered himself around the streets and pedestrian precincts to his goal. If someone would have bothered to look at him as he barged his way through the crowds of street-punks, street-punk wannabes, mob enforcers, assassins, pirates, prostitutes and all manner of grime in between, they would have seen a man who looked like he should have been a merchant seaman or a member of some other kind of legitimate, but mischievous, job. A strait-laced mouth, a light stubble and eyes that were hard, but carried no demon, heightened the look of a man who knew right from wrong.  
And he would have been the first to admit right from wrong, especially when it was he doing the wronging, but people had the unnerving habit of thinking he was a mad insane killer, all because he had been kicked out of both the Pirate's Guild _and_ the K'anrtaki Mafia.

So the money dried up as the jobs became harder to come by. The ship had been pawned off in a desperate bid to keep afloat, and those few people who did offer employment were more than a little annoyed when they found that the 'mad insane killer' they needed wasn't actually a mad insane killer but a victim of circumstance and a very, very scrupulous fellow.

Therefore it had come as some surprise when he had received word from a certain... well, friend would have been pushing it. Acquaintance would fit the bill a little better, but meant that there was no real emotion between the two. Perhaps the phrase 'emotionally attached associate' would hold more sway. Whatever the case Arikaan was not a man who asked for assistance without due course. Especially if he went so far as to call out the old war-dog...

Plus he paid well, which was what Grimm needed more than anything else.

'Stumpy Bob's House of Beer' was, as many people put it, the place for rubbing shoulders with the criminal element that was too upper-class to go around mugging but too low-brow to say 'please' when they ordered you to hand over the diamond necklaces. Either way, it was clean, safe and respectable but without dropping the image that it was a seedy den of inequity. Grimm shuffled in, pushed past the doorman who was ejecting an unruly customer and ambled over to the bar.  
The place was filled with customers. Tables were clustered with wide-boys, the floor was packed with yet more wide-boys, the beer was flowing freely (or cheaply at least), mainly into the maws of wide-boys, and music was thumping out of bass speakers that had been stuck up on brackets on the walls, strategically placed so that no one could hear anything but the backing beat. A thick smog hung in the air from all the puffsticks and roll-ups that were being gasped on by the majority of the patrons, many of whom had more warrants than brain cells.

Surprisingly for this time of night (figuratively and literally speaking) the stools around the bar were pretty much devoid of life, the only person sitting there being the man with the crooked nose who had never left the seat in all the years Grimm had been here. This was, most likely, attributed to the fact that he was quite, quite dead. After fifty-three and a half standard years propping up the bar and subsequently dying of such a severe cardiac shock that his heart had popped like a baked potato, the man (no one had ever found out his name. It was most likely something along the lines of Clive or Dave or some such) had been taken to the local taxidermist and given pride of place in Stumpy's proprietary. No one had the nerve to complain, because Stumpy Bob had a disdain for people who complained about the decor.  
This disdain usually manifested itself in ripping the arms and legs off the complainer. Then beating them to death with the soggy end. This was still pretty high-class compared to some of the other drinking-houses that could be found in Dark Side, where having your arms and legs ripped off was seen as one of the nicer things to have done to you, if you so much as looked at someone the wrong way.  
Without a word Grimm ambled his way around the tables and the various shady characters clogging them, to take a seat at one of the empty stools. He managed to find one that wasn't splaying its stuffing out of various knife slashes, and so got himself into as comfortable a position as can be found on a pub stool.  
_There has to_, he decided after various pains in his backside, _be a specific law stating that all bar stools must be uncomfortable to those people who do not have buttocks the same size and shape as two badly parked starcruisers_. He slapped his hand down on the counter in a desperate bid to catch the attention of the hirsute, half-pig barman who was serving a pair of snotty-nosed Triclotians, both of whom didn't appear to have learnt what a tissue was for. Whatever the case, it took more than six-foot tall blue slugs dribbling mucus from their orifices to put Grimm off his drink.  
"A pint of your best," he ordered when the barman finally waddled over to him on its furry trunk-like legs.  
The barman pulled a pint, then slapped the quart of yellowish liquid on the counter. It looked at Grimm expectantly.   
"Put it on my tab," Grimm answered. He reached across for the glass, only to be stopped by the barman's massive hand slapping down on his own, pinning it in place.  
"Fgrr nasht taar'aa.... Qruin Grimm," growled the barman, its fingers wrapped tighter around Grimm's wrist, just a hair's breadth off breaking the limb like a particularly skinny wishbone.  
Grimm glanced up at the creature. "I know my tab's in the hundreds... but I'll fix it, really..." he started.  
The barman grunted then took back the beer glass. "Laaar msh'stats hwar. Nestha steb'bar," it gurgled through stunted ochre teeth. Its other hand released the grip on the pirate's arm.  
Grimm looked at the barman pleadingly. "Come on! Would it hurt you so much to let me have a drink?"  
"Rrr'as."  
"_YES?!_" Grimm slammed his head against the bar's counter, then upon realising it hurt, didn't bother doing it again. "You don't repay people, Bob. I helped you when those casuals tried to get protection money out of you."  
"Rrr'as... Hasst bin _STUMPY_ Ma'ar, Grimm."  
"I didn't say it worked, I said I helped you!"

"Put it on _my_ tab," cut a voice through the hazy fug.

Grimm and the barman turned and looked at the three men who were moving toward them. The pub's customers had parted before them like the speaker was some kind of alien Moses. This could probably be attributed to the two rather mean-looking heavies that flanked him.  
"Lucius Grimm! My old mercenary friend!" cried Arikaan, who looked like a dwarf between the two mountains of suited, bodyguard flesh that stood either side of him. This was, of course, entirely wrong, because if Arikaan was a dwarf then Grimm was a blue and red fish. Which he wasn't.   
Arikaan's demure Juraian smile hid the razor-blade snarl that Grimm knew was really there. Slowly, the newly arrived man's soft green eyes rounded on the barman, who put the beer glass down and backed away, fear suddenly written across his snout.  
Arikaan smiled, in a similar sort of fashion as can be expected from a shark to a small fish.  
"I have a little deal going with the current owners," he said as some form of explanation, as he sat down at the empty stool next to Grimm's. The two heavies moved over to a nearby table and took a seat, the original occupants suddenly realising that they had more important things to do elsewhere. Sort of five or six blocks away elsewhere.  
Grimm picked up the beer and fished a hair out of it. "A deal?"  
"He does as he's told and I don't have him nailed to the ceiling."  
"Sounds like a good business transaction."  
"Oh, it is."  
Arikaan sniffed loudly and wiped his nose with a Juraian hanky that he took from his breast pocket. It was one of those strange little things about him that he was never seen in public out of his expensively imported pinstripe suits. Not Earth pinstripe suits, mind you, but the rather more cultured Panolanian pinstripe with the triple-breast and matted silk finish. "How's things, Grimm?" he asked quietly as he folded the hanky and returned it to his pocket.

"Same old, same old," came Grimm's muttered reply. Then he sighed and prodded the beer glass gingerly, "Well, maybe not as good as old times."  
"I heard you were sleeping in a roach motel in the Lower South side."  
Grimm prodded the beer glass a little more vigorously, "It's not exactly six star, I admit."  
"At least six stars fumigate every so often, eh?" Arikaan smiled, then rapped his knuckles on the bar. The barman looked around, shuddered, then poured the shot of vodka that was ordered.  
"So what's this job?" asked Grimm, managing to hide the anger he felt at this honest, but not particularly kind, snipe at his monetary situation.  
"Well, Grimm," started Arikaan benignly, "You know how I look after certain items that might prove incriminating to those who have managed to obtain them?"  
Grimm thought about this for a moment. "No," he said finally, "You're a fence."  
"Fence has such a vulgar image attached," Arikaan stated, with another one of his barely hidden razor-blade smiles, "I am an Accumulator of Extra-Legal Goods."  
"No. You're a fence."  
The smile disappeared, the snarl rising to replace it. Arikaan composed himself, realigned his jaw to give the prim smile that a Juraian should have and continued, "Here's the job," he said, his face now fixed, "A certain associate wanted to sell something to me, something a little... special. However, before he managed to get it to me he went and got himself arrested in a police bust."  
"And this _something_ happens to have been taken with him?"  
"Evidence of his nefarious deeds. I would get him a lawyer but I fear that my _something_ might get kept by the authorities."  
Grimm frowned, "The authorities?" He looked at Arikaan. "Local or Galaxy Police?"  
"My something is being carried on a GP cruiser, along with a lot of other useless junk." He downed the vodka in a single gulp and slammed the glass back down on the counter. His face went red. He coughed loudly. "It's amazing what information a few creds will buy these days." He rapped his knuckles on the counter again and pointed at his glass. "Another please, Bob."

Grimm took a swig of his beer while the barman refilled Arikaan's glass.  
_This certainly would be a big job. But a Galaxy Police cruiser?_ He turned that one over in his mind. "How much?"  
Arikaan gulped down another shot of the clear liquid and coughed loudly. "Fifty thousand," he squeaked.  
"Fifty thousand creds?" Grimm's mouth fell open.  
Arikaan blinked rapidly, trying to clear the tears from his eyes. Although this might have seemed a little over the top for a casual viewer, it should be noted that Arrikan was downing Kinhauser Vodka. This is slightly stronger than its backwater counterparts, as it has an alcohol level and taste similar to that of paint stripper. It is a common University and college prank to top up a (n ex-) friend's orange juice with it, then laugh insanely when the drinker goes temporarily blind. "Well," said the fence waving his hand in front of his face and managing to pick out the blurry movement, "If you want to turn down fifty-thousand creds, I won't stop you."

"No, no!" cried Grimm. He grabbed at the other man, who was making to stand up, "I'm sure I can do it."  
Arikaan sat back down, smiling. "Good. I was sure that an agreement could be reached."  
Nodding, Grimm looked over his shoulder at the two heavies who had squeezed themselves into chairs that had been made for people half their size.  
"However," he said, "I will need a few bits and bobs. A ship. One of those police-scanners, the type that can pick up GP communications and-" He stopped as he realised the other man's grin had widened even further. "Why are you smiling?"

"Oh," Arikaan said slyly, "We couldn't let you go on your lonesome now, could we?"

* * * * *

No matter how many times he'd done it, Grimm still found it the most curious feeling to be flying through an atmosphere. Wrapped in a cocoon of metal and leather seats, which was melded to an anti-gravity propulsion drive, the hover-car's occupants barreled through the twisting maze of Dark Side skyscrapers. Arikaan really knew how to travel in style, even if no one would ever be able to see his limousine with the naked eye.

The black, streamlined manta-ray shaped vehicle ploughed along the skyways, dipping and weaving amongst the endless rows of sonar guided traffic. In its back, separated from the driver and heavies by soundproof glass, Arikaan and Grimm sat in quiet contemplation.

"I don't work with other people," said Grimm. Arikaan said nothing, but handed him a goblet full of wine. The auto-gyros kept the repetitious ducking and weaving of the limousine from spilling Grimm's drink, but they did nothing for the ducking and weaving of his own stomach. "I don't work with other people, Arikaan," he said again, a little more forcefully.

"You've worked with people before," smiled the fence. He was lounging on the seat opposite Grimm's, his own glass now half-empty.  
"Yes. But people have a habit of trying to sell me down the river."  
Arikaan's smile widened, "These people won't. They're superb at their chosen professions... They're the best."  
"Tanjeer The Hood?"  
"No. He got put away fourteen years ago for GBH and armed robbery."  
Grimm frowned. "Oh. It isn't El Diablo, the BLEEPARD brute of Banyara?"  
"Dead."  
"Dead?" Grimm's eyebrows raised themselves a notch.  
"Juraian Border patrol ship blew him to pieces six months ago. I thought you would have heard about it."  
Grimm shrugged. "I've been out of the loop a long time." He pondered for a second, "Kyle Katarn?"  
"You _have_ been out of the loop a long time! Nobody's seen Katarn since he took up teaching hokey religions to a bunch of rebels in the Suntari Sector."

"Hmmmm..." Grimm sighed thoughtfully and took a sip of the beverage in his hand. He paused. Looked down at the drink. "Good wine," he muttered, "Juraian 1134, if I'm not mistaken."  
"Your lack of money belies your superb taste," Arikaan retorted.  
"Your extravagance proves your pretentiousness. Who am I working with then?"  
The fence put the glass down and took the hanky from his pocket, wiped at his mouth with it. "Since the disappearance of our dear good friend Ryoko all those centuries ago, there's been a distinct shortage of good labour around. Now that the GP aren't afraid that Kagato or Ryoko will attack them, they've lost some of that old fear they had."   
He leant forward, "Did you know the GP's been raiding the Ace Gang's flop houses? A century ago and they would have been running away at the first sign of Ace activity. Now they're bashing down their doors and slapping cuffs on everything that moves. A police state, I tell you. It's a damned police state."  
When Grimm said nothing, he continued, "My _magnificent _and _libertarian_ home-world, with its oh-so-gracious King Azusa, has had a crackdown on organised crime rings. Now tell me, is that any way to treat semi-legitimate businessmen?"

Grimm shook his head. "What part of 'who am I working with' don't you understand?"  
"What? Oh, sorry." The fence picked his wine glass back up again, "How does the Universe's greatest scientific genius and the 'Tanma Thief' sound?"  
"Like a bad stand-up comedy routine," replied Grimm. He turned back to the window and the pinpricks of light in the darkness. In the glass's reflection he saw Arikaan waggle his eyebrows in amusement. "In that case, you'll like 'em. I'll go over the contract when you're acquainted."

Grimm felt the vehicle lurch again as it spun off down another aisle of super-skyscrapers and dodged the traffic that lay between them.

* * * * *

The limousine pulled into one of Dark Side's rather more shady spaceports, gliding into one of the massive hangar situated along the gigantic building's walls. Now with the lights from the hangar's interior as illumination, Grimm looked out the vehicle's window. Below him the boxy form of a ship, the KOCORREL, passed. He knew it was the KOCORREL because it had KOCORREL written in giant white letters across its turquoise bow. A handful of spaceport technicians were clambering over its form. Tiny doll shapes welding and refueling in fits and starts.  
"How big is that thing?" asked Grimm, as they continued traveling its length.  
"Not as big as a Tree Ship," came the reply. He heard a _clink_ from behind him as Arikaan poured himself another glass of wine. "A little bigger than a GP patrol-cutter."  
Grimm nodded, though he wasn't suitably impressed, he decided it was probably better to show some politeness. "Grand." He turned back to the wine quaffing fence. "But I was expecting something a little larger..."  
Arikaan grinned. "I'm sure all your girlfriends say that. Now, about your crew..."

The limousine began its slow descent.

The red-haired scientist reading a bioelectronics manual looked up at Grimm and Arikaan as they stepped on board the KOCORREL. Inside that head, the galaxy's greatest mind; which at that moment had been working on at least sixteen different physical and biological theories, had been collecting near photographic memories of the entire area and was writing a feature length novel, slowly turned itself towards the two men and began its sharp and analytical break-down of who they were, what they were doing here and how best to acknowledge them.  
"Salutations," greeted the mouth.

Grimm looked at the scientist then looked at Arikaan. "Who's that?" he asked, in a voice that didn't really sound like it was interested, but felt that it would be more polite if it pretended to. It was the sound of voice employed by secretaries in large expensive companies.  
The scientist closed the book and sat up in the chair, his Galaxy Academy uniform, which was smudged and frayed, folding into intricate geometric forms. "Who am I?" he asked indignantly, "I, dear sir, am the greatest scientist to grace this universe's sullied pivot."  
This would probably have been more intimidating, or at least awe-inspiring, if it weren't for the fact that the scientist was a fifteen or sixteen year old boy, freckles, acne and all. Rangy would probably have most courteously described the look of him. Weedy would have been less courteous, but rather more descriptive.  
Grimm blinked and, upon opening his eyes to find that the strange-talking little boy was still there, decided to have a look around.

The KOCORREL was build along the same lines as every other ship that happened to have been built during the last four hundred years. So when it had been built _eight-hundred_ years ago, it had probably been cutting edge. Now it looked like it should have been cutting pension coupons. The room that Grimm stood in was what was generally called '_the hold_'. It was a rather large thing, easily big enough to have held a good couple of hundred tons worth of gold bullion or, if Grimm wasn't so inclined to measure everything as to how much gold it could store, its measurements were about 85 x 75 ft. The feeling of antiquity was not helped by the rather tacky 'retro-chic' aesthetics, all chrome and plastic, which made it appear even more decrepit and pathetic than it should appear to be.  
"This thing's older than me," said Grimm. He looked at two workmen who wandered up the access ramp and set about prying up the floor's grille tiles.

Arikaan ignored him and waved his hand at the red-headed scientist, who didn't appear to be too impressed about Grimm's lack of interest. "This," said Arikaan, "Is Krasla'ishiputiyhunrhonvachiopelopolis'polydodecahedronitis'la. One of the greatest scientists to grease this universally... unsullied... pivotal..." He coughed. "Anyway, he's an ex-alumni of the Galaxy Academy."

"You can call me Kras," said the boy, and held out his hand. However, Grimm was paying more attention to the two workman who, having finished ripping up a few of the floor's mesh panels, had started rummaging through the mass of wires and ducts that twisted beneath it with more aplomb than skill.

"And your epithet might be?" asked Kras, hand still outstretched. His face began to grow red as Grimm continued surveying the workmen, who were now attempting to remove a delicate container holding a high-pressured cocktail of lethal and explosive gases using the tried and true method of 'hit it with the hammer until it falls off'.  
"Arikaan. If they continue to do that, they will blow the entire ship to pieces," Grimm stated as politely as the situation would allow.  
"Are you mentally retarded or cloth-eared?" asked Kras, through gritted teeth, his hand still outstretched.  
Grimm, suddenly realising he was being spoken to, looked around. "Sorry? Were you saying something?"

The red-haired scientist dropped his hand back down to his side, his face now as red as his hair, then turned to Arikaan. The fence shrugged in embarrassment, looked at Grimm, "Mr. Kras was just asking for your name." He raised his eyebrows. _Go on, answer him...  
_ "Oh. Right," replied Grimm. He returned to watching the apparently not-very-technical technicians.

Those two workers, in turn, looked up at the three other men. "Excuse me," asked one of the jump-suited, hard-hat wearing engineers, "You wouldn't happen to know which wire the warp cortex connects the helm, would you?"  
"Oh, BLEEP-OFF the pair of you!" snapped Arikaan. As the two workman stormed off, muttering about the lack of respect paid to them these days, Arikaan tapped Grimm on the shoulder. "Are you ready to be useful yet?"  
The pirate nodded, turned around and held out his hand. "The name's Grimm."

But the scientist didn't reiterate his handshake. "Grimm?" he gasped, his glowing face lowering to a simmer, "As in... Lucius Grimm?"  
"Yes," came the reply.  
"As in, Lucius Grimm, the most famed pirate since Kagato, Ryoko and Hellter Von Mecklenburg?"  
"Apparently so."  
"The same Lucius Grimm as the one who plundered ships from the very depths of Juraian territory, to the widest expanses of the Galactic Rim?"  
"That is an exaggeratio-"  
"Lucius Grimm, the gentleman's pirate? The man who who robbed entire cruisers but wouldn't steal from women, cripples or the poor?"  
"Well, I suppose that could be admitted."  
"The same man who stole the fabled solid platinum statue, 'The Lost Father' from under the very noses of a detachment of Riclotian Storm Guard who had been ordered to protect it, and upon doing so wrote a letter to the Riclotian Emirate saying that your ability to do so was through no fault of any of the soldiers defending it and that none should be punished?"  
"Ye-e-e-e-s."  
"But you're a mad insane killer!"

Grimm's eyes darkened. "I am no more a mad insane killer," he growled, "Than you're a member of the Galaxy Academy!"  
"HOW DARE YOU!" cried the boy, his face now suddenly leaping to bake, "I wear my uniform with the pride-fuelled knowledge that I consummated that most prestigious of scholastic itineraries!" He threw his arms wide, "I finished with a Galaxy Academy Doctorate!"  
Grimm waved his arms about in a spastic travesty of Kras'. "I finished with a Galaxy Arse-cadamy Doctorate," he slobbered, "Look at me, I use long words!" He lowered his arms and rolled his eyes, "Come back when your voice breaks, okay?"

"GENTLEMEN!" bellowed Arikaan. He glowered at the two men, who had suddenly gone quite pale.(2)  
"Would you please remember why it is that you're here. Grimm? Kras?" The two criminals looked at each other, and then at their shoes. "There are a large number of people who would take on this job," continued Arikaan, "And they wouldn't be bickering like a couple of schoolchildren." He caught sight of Grimm about to say something, and flashed him a look. "_Go on,"_ it said, _"Make some witty pun now. See where it gets you..."_

"Mumble mumble mumble... sorry... mumble..." grumbled Grimm.  
"Grumble grumble grumble... I am suitably chastised and contrite... grumble..." mumbled Kras. He looked up, freckles burning white on his now reddened face, "So, when are you going to tell us about this 'job' of yours?"

Arikaan plucked a silver pocket watch from his breast. It glinted expensively on its chain. "It should be around about now," he said, checking the timepiece, "But the final piece in this little escapade isn't here yet." With another glance at the watch, he snapped the cover back down and returned it to the pocket.  
"I don't see why we need another operative," stated Kras eloquently. He moved back over to his seat and picked the bioelectronics manual up. "With my brains and Mr. Grimm's brawn, we'll make an excellent team."  
"Well," replied Grimm turning to Arikaan, "With my brains _and_ my brawn, I'll make an excellent team."  
Behind his back, Kras gave him a hand signal that was only partially related to the sign of 'V - For Victory'.

_By Tsunami! Whoever said there was no honour among thieves certainly wasn't lying! _Arikaan groaned inwardly, opened his mouth to give them a tongue-lashing (and why they couldn't behave themselves, he had no idea) and then shut it just as suddenly. From outside the craft there was a massive crash and shouting, the sounds of people running and the clattering of equipment being dropped. There was another bang followed by the shattering of glass. All of this was added to by a whooping roar that seemed to whiz from above them, to behind them and finally to just outside. The three men looked at each other with surprise and then careened out and down the ramp.

The hangar was in a shambles. Its length and width, which was mostly taken up by the KOCORREL but also included all the usual trappings of efficient ship-maintenance, was strewn with equipment. Crates and packing cases littered the floor, fuel hoses were left snaking where they had been dropped, energy tanks and barrels were rolling along from the exhaust plumes being given off by the rather sleek looking one-man ship that was hovering a few yards above what was now an empty space, but had been a stack of spare parts. The draught from the craft's engines was so strong that the hangar's occupants were forced to grab something to keep themselves upright. Grimm, who had his arm wrapped around one of the metal poles that attached the ramp to the KOCORRAL, watched as an unfortunate technician skittered along the floor and smacked into the hangar wall.  
Apparently having found a place to land, the hovering craft's engines began to slow down. The roar became a dull cough, which ground into a shuddering moan and, finally, the craft lowered itself. It looked rather like a large eyeball; the cockpit being a large bulbous sphere and the tail tapering off into a pointed 'nerve-stem' like shape. Stunted wings grew from its sides, not even remotely necessary for handling or flight but for purely aesthetic reasons. As its landing gear touched the floor, the black reflective windscreen opened with a hydraulic _whoosh_. The pilot stepped out.   
From around the room, a handful of technicians, their clothes and hair in disarray, wielding spanners and bits of lead piping, clambered from where they'd fallen. Their faces displayed a certain wanton anger that went well with their uniforms.

The pilot slammed the cockpit shut and looked at the approaching men, all of whom hefted their weaponry in a way that would have made any sane man leap back into the craft and get the Hells out of Dodge.  
But the pilot didn't. He watched them come closer, until finally they had set up a semi-circle around him. Then, just as the leading technician stepped forward, he gave a heavy nod. "For your troubles," he said to the foremost man, and took a credit from his trouser pocket. He stepped forward and slid it into the technician's jumpsuit pocket, patted it into place. The technicians, who had been expecting a good old-fashioned fight, stopped and looked at him. The one who had been given the money took the note out of his pocket and looked at it in surprise.  
Stretching, the pilot tilted his head, and set off for the three men by the KOCORREL's ramp. Then he stopped and span around, tossed something to one of the other techs. "Park it somewhere nice, okay?" he said sharply.  
The technician who had caught the thrown object opened his hand fearfully. His brow knotted as the craft's key glinted from his palm.

The pilot continued his masculine swagger.

He stood a few yards away from the hold's access ramp, hands on hips, legs akimbo in staunch bravado. His leather bomber jacket puffed up heroically complimented the scarf wrapped around his neck, which trailed behind from where the KOCORREL's air-circulating vents blew. His trousers, which were particularly fashionable and made out of a substance not totally unlike tinfoil(4), reflected the hangar's lights and dazzled the eyes. He looked every inch the overblown, smug BLEEPARD Grimm thought he was.  
"Ah!" clapped Arikaan, "The Third Man!"  
Kras frowned, "I'm sure that was a film."

"If it was," said the pilot suddenly. He whipped off his sunglasses and ran the same hand through his hair. "I'd have to be the star. Because I'm naturally photogenic." He flashed a white toothed smile, unnaturally gleaming in skin that had obviously spent a few too many hours under a UV light. "Arikaan!" he beamed, "I hear you've got a job going down. For me!" He laughed a deep staccato beat.  
Kras and Grimm stood there, frozen to the spot. Wide-eyed, they looked at each other. "_Who is this fool?"_ asked Kras' glance voicelessly. _  
"Ditto. And what idiot wears sunglasses at night?"_ replied Grimm's.  
Kras shrugged, which surprised Grimm no end. He looked up at the pilot again and felt the sudden gripping twist in his bowels that either meant he needed to go to the toilet really badly, or he was getting angry. It was, quite understandably, the latter, because if there was one thing Grimm couldn't stand; it was fish.  
But the second thing he couldn't stand, was people dressed in leggings made from very thin sheets of metal.  
And the third was idiots.

Two out of three wasn't bad. And if he squinted hard enough, the pilot did look like a rainbow-trout, drawn and painted by Pablo Picasso's spastic half-brother.

"I didn't know there was a Gay Pride parade taking place today," said Grimm looking the man up and down in a way that practically dripped disdain. Next to him Kras sniggered.  
The pilot, who had been smugly eyeing up the ship, returned the gaze. His eyes narrowed. "Arikaan," he said, looking at the fence, "Did you know your pet monkey's learnt to talk?"

"OH, FOR TSUNAMI'S SAKE!" Arikaan cried. He brought his hands up to his face and peered through the cracks between his fingers. "Can't you all just get along?"  
There was a long heavy silence. He lowered his hands and composed himself for the second time that day, the three criminals looking at him in shocked expectance, their nerves frayed like a cheese grater had been across their souls.  
"Thank the goddess." He breathed deeply and, after filling his lungs with air, gave a ready smile. "Now perhaps we'd better get acquainted. This gentleman," he pointed at the man, "Is Orifati. The so-called 'Tanma Thief'."  
"It's a pleasure to meet y'all," grunted Orifati, trying to get his muscles working again, "If you're on this job, I'm sure you're good. Because otherwise _I_ wouldn't be on it."

"Great," muttered Grimm, "I've got a wannabe-movie star with an ego problem and a child who thinks he's a BLEEPING dictionary..."

* * * * *

When the Corellian Engineering Corporation designed the YT-1200 Midweight Freighter(5), someone had obviously been told to design a bridge for it, and had taken that in its most literal sense. The KOCORREL's bridge was as its name suggested. A very large, very long _bridge _that spanned the engine room. On closer examination, it transpired that there were only three (major) rooms in the entire vessel; the hold, the aforementioned engine room and a room that had been rather handily designated 'The Control Room' with a hand-written note sticky-taped to the door. This was because, as Arikaan pointed out, the CEC had taken so long designing the bridge that they didn't have the time or the money to actually put in a helm, control electronics, a life-support system or any of the other things that make the craft actually drivable or survivable in the cold hard vacuum that is space.  
Unsurprisingly, the YT-1200 wasn't too well received; perhaps because it was butt-ugly, hideously old fashioned, had a deck layout that could've been drawn by a three-year old terran with a crayon, had no actual means of control and contained no less than three major flaws in its structural integrity. Fortunately, judicious use of welded iron plates, and a complete overhaul of the helm (i.e. putting one in) had erased that last pair of niggling problems from the KOCORREL, but, still, it wasn't much of a selling point.

In a desperate bid, CEC sold the YT-1200s at a terrific loss, the idea being that if they sold them cheap enough people wouldn't complain if the entire thing suffered from explosive decompression while they were in it. After flogging two-thirds of the manufactured stock and melting down the rest, the CEC went back to the drawing board and designed the YT-1300 and the now famed Corvette, known among certain circles as the 'Blockade Runner'.

This, of course, meant nothing to Kras, Grimm and Orifati who stood on their vessel's bridge with their new employer, listening to the great noises from the monolithic engines beneath them. The machinery was banging and wheezing and sounded somewhat like an asthmatic dinosaur in mating season. In silent thought the four men rested against the waist-high barriers that separated the bridge from a very long, very painful looking drop into the gears and pistons and metal appendages below.

"Gentlemen," said Arikaan finally, "I expect you want to know why I've called you out here."  
The three 'gentlemen' exchanged glances, but said nothing.

"Time is running short and that's why I brought you all together to hear this." He licked his lips and wondered how best to continue. "In the past I've used your various aptitudes individually. But today I need all of skills pooled together.  
"A Galaxy Police cruiser, the GREEN EMERALD, is carrying something I want. If you get it, and bring it back to me, you will each be paid a lump-sum of 50,000 creds. In cash."

Kras' and Orifati's eyes widened. "Fifty thousand?" gasped the scientist.

"Fifty thousand credits in cash," repeated Arikaan slowly. "I need that object. _Need_ _it._ But, needless to say, it's going to be a pain in the BLEEP getting it."  
"I'd take a pain in the BLEEP for fifty thousand," muttered Orifati.  
Grimm's face split into a smarmy grin. "I wouldn't be surprised if you take pains in the BLEEP for fun."

"Fifty-thousand, gentlemen," snapped Arikaan before any more words of wisdom could be exchanged, "The cruiser will rendezvous with GP Deep Space Precinct 9 in..." He fished out his pocket watch and checked it, "Less than 36 hours."  
"Why us?" asked Grimm suddenly. He rubbed at the stubble on his chin thoughtfully. "Why not some of your hired guns? I'm sure you wouldn't even have to _ask_ them to do it."  
Orifati nodded, "The guy's got a point. I mean, I'm flattered, but I haven't done a job since I got out of Sing-Song Penitentiary."

There was a brief moment as Arikaan's Juraian smirk rose again. "Have the old men lost their nerve?"

In a galaxy in which 90% of the sovereign nations still uphold a death penalty for shoplifting, crime is seen as the most brave (or foolhardy) job to take on. That's why so many criminals in the Galactic Union don't have any compunctions about killing innocents; once you've killed one, you're usually wanted for life. The sentence which Arikaan had uttered was therefore akin to going up to a Catholic Priest and asking, "So, you've stopped molesting Choir Boys?"  
It had all the subtlety of a mortar shell up the backside of a pet hamster. But it did its job...

"WHAT?!" bellowed Grimm. His eyelid twitched. "_Old man_?"  
Orifati pulled a face behind his sunglasses that was probably meant to be coolly shocked, but made him look like a constipated moose. "I'll show you nerve, buddy! I've robbed banks that'd make your hair stand on end!"  
"I'm only a couple of years older than you!" Grimm continued.  
Orifati pointed at the fence in unconcealed anger, "Banks with more locks than a Juraian girl's chastity belt!"  
"A year and a couple of days, in fact!"  
"And lasers... with 76-D Tracking Scanners attached!"  
"I'll show you _old man_! You've got my vote on this little heist!"  
"This things gonna be easier than a goddamn bank! Easier than a goddamn two-cred BLEEP! Count me in!"

Unfortunately Kras didn't seem to rise to the bait. He stood there thoughtfully as the other two men continued fuming and rambling. "So why?" he asked.  
The two criminals stopped their talk.  
"Why?" asked Arikaan.  
"Yes. Why?"

The fence sighed sadly, as if he'd been defeated. "Because you're the best," he said simply, "You're professionals. Look at this galaxy... it's going down the toilet. There aren't any more professionals around. They're all 'gangstas' and 'mobs'. There's no love of the work, there's no trademark genius, no... honesty anymore. I'm a businessman, not a killer. I don't want bodies dropping left, right and centre. You don't either..." He paused. "Well, Grimm might."  
"No."  
"Well, okay, Grimm doesn't. But the fact is that people are just interested in murdering everyone these days." He pointed at the tinfoil wearing Tanma Thief, "When you used to do it, you prided yourself on your ability not to hurt anyone... where are you now, eh? I'll tell you, you're shining shoes for nickels and trying to keep one step ahead of the debt-collectors, that's what!"  
Orifati held out in his hands in despair. "You said you weren't going to tell anyone!"  
"And you," continued Arikaan, this time motioning at Kras, "You were the Heert Business's heist-plotter. What happened to you?"  
Kras shrugged, "Problems with the management."  
"That's one way of saying they put a twenty-thousand credit price on your head!" said Arikaan. "And Grimm... well, we all know Grimm."

They all looked at Grimm. There was a very long silence; the sort that comes just after the declaration of the Three-Minute Warning.  
After a while Grimm looked back at them. "What?" he asked.  
"Wait one second," said Orifati. Something was beginning to stir in his mind. A memory was banging around the back of his subconscious with the energy of a sledgehammer. Rocketing off synapses and rebounding. "Grimm," he said slowly. _  
Ah_! There it was again! The feeling that there was a word to be said here... something pertaining to the situation quite deeply. It was something to do with the name Grimm. Something-

He remembered.  
"BLEEP" he said, "You're Lucius Grimm!"  
Grimm looked at himself. His eyes shot wide, "My God, so I am." He looked at the other man quizzically. "So?"  
"_THE_ Lucius Grimm?"  
"Oh Goddess," muttered Grimm, seeing where this was going.  
"Grimm, the most renowned privateer of the Juraian Empire?"  
"Pirate. Not privateer."  
"That same Lucius Grimm who eluded the greatest military mind that the Uresians could put out after him?"  
"The second greatest actually."  
"The self-same hero who disappeared off the face of the galaxy and hasn't been seen for fourteen years?!"  
"It started as a sabbatical but it just kept on going."  
"But you're a mad insane killer!"

"One mistake," Grimm muttered. He shook his head, "One mistake and they persecute you for _LIFE_! How come nobody complains about Ryoko!"  
Arikaan made a sympathetic gesture, "You have to admit... she is cuter." He smiled benignly, his mind lost in a swamp of pornographic images.  
"Sexual equality is dead," snapped Grimm. His face darkened. "She killed more people than me. And they were deliberate!"  
"See! That's what I'm talking about!" said Arikaan, his mind's eye apparently run through the best fantasies, "She became a role model for criminals. She made it okay to go around killing people. Professionalism is no longer a factor in today's world... now it's like a Juraian Army conscript."  
Orifati frowned behind his sunglasses, "What? Young?"  
"No! Expendable!" said Arikaan. He turned around and dropped his gaze down at the machines below, his hands gripped the bridge's railing. "When I was a spiv,(6) the violence was within certain, well defined, circles. You didn't hurt anyone who didn't need to be. And that's why you, no, _we_, have lost face. Nobody cares anymore... Nobody."  
He sighed quietly, a noise drowned out by the engines' great thudding.

"You pull this one off and you'll be able to get back into the swing of things. Household names. Heroes." He paused, "Well, of a sort."   
Then, as if realising he was reminiscing like a senior citizen, rather than recruiting like a scary criminal, his voice rose to its normal level; "I feel the well deserved respect will, naturally, be more than in excess of the nuisance needed to get it back. The _item_, gentlemen, is all that I want. Keep the kudos and the money, just bring me that damn _item_!"  
He turned back to them, the tight-lipped smile looking as dark as ever. He would have looked every inch the all-powerful mafia boss, with his pinstriped suit and strangely psychopathic grin. The effect was somewhat spoilt by the thick, black, foul-smelling axel grease smeared across his fingers and palms from where he had gripped the railing.  
"So, yay or nay?" he asked, apparently oblivious of his rather uncharacteristic image.

"That," said Orifati, "Depends on which one of those is 'yes'."  
"Yay is yes," muttered Kras.  
"Yay, then."  
Grimm hiked his shoulders, "I've got nothing better to do with my weekend."  
"And what about you?" asked Arikaan of the scientist.  
Kras gave a sharp laugh, a sound like a car backfiring. "You think I'm going to go with them on this little escapade? You think I've got so little going on with my life that I'd happily leap on your little bandwagon and go gallivanting across the galaxy on a quest to find something that I have no idea about? I'm a scientist. _THE_ greatest scientist, if you will. But you think I'm just some misanthrope who feels the need to plunder objects, eh? Is that the sort of man you think I am, eh?" A withering glance proceeded it. "Well, you're right. How do I join?"

* * * * *

It was lucky the Control Room was labelled as such, because otherwise people might have mistaken it for a bomb-site cum failed electricians workshop. Large holes exposing wires and piping were dotted around the walls and ceiling. During the ship's retrofitting one entire wall had windows cut into it and forcefields put in so as to give what was, apparently, an unhindered view of space. Unfortunately, the wall that had been cut into was not facing spaceward, but rather was the bulkhead that separated the Control Room from the corridor that led to what was laughably called 'Engineering'.(7)  
In going someway toward visibility, a 3D computation system had been built in to allow a pilot to look outside any part of the ship's hull at any time. There were three screens in front of the pilot's chair. The middle one had a pair of furry dice hanging from it.

Grimm looked at the room with the casual air of someone who wished he didn't have to. "Great," he said slowly, "Just great. This is something you'd have to pay the scrap-merchant to take away."  
"I hardly think it's that bad," said Arikaan with conscious effort, as it was fairly obvious that he was thinking the same thing.  
"It has gears," Grimm said. He walked over to the control chair and the panel. "With a clutch."  
Arikaan shrugged. "Power steering, though."  
Grimm wheeled toward him, "It's meant to be a ship, not a tank! And what are these?" He span back around and held the furry dice in his hand.  
"I think they're dice," hazarded Orifati. He walked over and looked at them a little more closely.  
"Of course they're BLEEPING dice!" snapped Grimm. He gave a hearty tug on the fuzzy cube. Its cord snapped; the dice's partner flopping down to dangle from his palm. They hung there dejectedly, swinging gently like a pendulum until he tossed them over to Kras, who caught them.  
"So we're settled then," stated Arikaan. He rubbed his chin and smiled, leaving a thick black mark across his face. "Need anything?"  
Kras looked at the bushy object in his hand. "A new pair of dice, probably."

* * * * *

Roughly thirty miles above Belatius VI 'Sufis Priçáté' Spaceport and the KOCORREL, the compound's control tower stood like some monolithic testament to Freudian psychology. Its huge, bulbous head, throbbing with life, stood out even above the super-skyscrapers that were packed around its base.  
Inside, hundreds of thousands of air-space-traffic-controllers buzzed around computers and radar screens, in a desperate bid to keep the five or six million craft that left or arrived every day, airborne. Today was not one of those days.

On a planet that had a population of three and a half billion officially, and probably double that in reality, a few hundred-thousand deaths a day was an average that could be lived with. Accidents on the massive, ground-based speedways would often result in ten or twenty thousand dead without making a two second reference on the news. Ship crashes could often get away with half-a-million to a three-quarters of a million in an average week without severe repercussions.(8)

The current air-traffic controller, whose name was unpronounceable in human terms and sounded like a Welshman trying to clean his throat, reclined in his chair. Hundreds of people scurried along the gantries strung out like party streamers high above him. Civilian clothed controllers clattered away on computer keyboards, in front of the banks of equipment that tried to keep everything up in the air. Aid-bots, small wheeled robots, scurried between the terminals, clutching print-outs and next-of-kin lists in the trays on their backs. Every so often a voice would rise above the hubbub of a thousand talking beings.  
"Someone get me a status report on how many were on that Pan-Galactic Cruiser, please. Could someone get a report on that cruiser, please? Hello? Is anyone listening to me? Thank you. Now, can someone get me a coffee?"

So the unpronounceable air-traffic controller lounged in his seat and watched the screen in front of him, his face illuminated by its luminescent glow. The tiny electronic dots moving on its plasti-glass weaved about drunkenly. Every so often one would touch a second and both would vanish in a brief flicker. Above the monitor one of the communication buttons switched red. He pressed the button.  
"Yello?"  
There was a pause from the other end. "Uh," said a voice, "Aren't you meant to say something like 'This is Tower One'?"  
"This is Tower One. Yello?"  
"This is KOCORREL asking for permission to leave the planet, over."  
"Yeah. Whatever."  
There was another, longer pause. "Is that a yes?"  
"Yep. Go and take off. I think Runway Three's clear." The controller looked at the readout next to his keyboard. "If they've scraped the wreckage off it anyway. Just mind the potholes."  
"Uh. Right. Thanks."  
"You're welcome," said the controller. He flicked the switch and turned off the broadcast and rolled his eyes. "Idiots."

Far below, the not particularly impressive form of the KOCORREL lifted itself from its hangar's floor. It wallowed for a few moments, and then there was a grinding crunch from its innards as someone wrestled with the sixth gear (which had a terrible sticking problem and one of the teeth on the cog was missing). Then, still wobbling gently, it floated gently out of the hangar door and into the darkness outside, like some very large and imperious blue brick.

In the hangar's office, nestled high in one of its corners, Arikaan watched the craft's aft hove out of view. After continuously dabbing at his brow and cheeks with his handkerchief, he now looked like he was preparing to audition for the Minstrel Show, although he didn't know it and nobody really had the heart to tell him.  
His two bodyguards stood some way off, peering out at the world from tiny pig-like eyes, which shone beneath thick boned brows.  
"Do you fink you can trust 'em boss?" asked one of them, who had been professional heavy-weight boxing champion of Manchura for seven years running.  
"Very much so," Arikaan replied, "Salt of the earth those men."

"Salt of the earth."

_TO BE CONTINUED..._

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

(1) And this was just the Sun Side Police Force's way of solving things.

(2) The shout of a Juraian can be one of the most distressing noises to be heard this side of the mating call of the Humpar Grass-Rooter.(3) This is because Juraian vocal cords resonate at a sub-sonic frequency when engaging in activities above the normal decibel level. This below-aural noise causes certain non-important brain functions in human listeners to shut-down; often resulting in people stopping mid-step or just standing there while the Juraian continues talking. Females use this trick quite frequently. And you just thought Ayeka had a squeaky voice, didn't you?

(3) The Grass-Rooter of Humpar Secondus gives off a mating call that sounds very much like two sacks of faeces being sucked into the rotors of a helicopter. This is in itself not that bad, but the return call, which sounds like a combine harvester going full-pelt through an orphanage, is rather harder on the ears.

(4) In fact, it _was_ tinfoil. This is the sort of thing that happens when the galaxy's largest manufacturer of kitchen goods buys fifteen-million shares in the galactic equivalent of "Levi's".

(5) A very subtle Star Wars in-joke... So subtle, in actuality, that it isn't even remotely funny.

(6) **_"Spiv"_ :** _n. Brit. colloq._ **:** a man, often characterised by flashy dressing, living from illicit or unscrupulous dealings [20th-century coinage]  
The term 'wide boy' that was seen earlier in the chapter, has replaced this rather antiquated word. And they say that fanfiction has no real educational benefit...

(7) It was a cupboard with two inflatable lifejackets, a hammer and a thick-bound manual entitled, "GUIDE TO EMERGENCY PROTOCOLS AND ENGINEERING EXPERTISE". All the pages had been torn out. Apart from the glossy ones.

(8) The largest crash ever to occur in the entire galaxy occurred on Belatius VI, when a small child (Isax Noom; age 65) dropped a single two milligram coin out of his bedroom window. The currency plummeted the five-hundred floors from his window, increasing speed to a terminal velocity of six-hundred miles an hour, before punching a two inch hole through the roof of a twenty-thousand ton juggernaut, and its driver's head. The resulting road accident destroyed over eighteen and a half million vehicles and killed thirty million people. The central part of the accident (in which eight to ten million colliding vehicles had fused into a solid lump of metal) measured a length over sixteen and a half miles. Resulting deaths from rubber-necking drivers on nearby roads crashing into their compatriots totalled an extra thirteen million. One car, managing to swerve around an obstructing wall (some five feet high) of body-parts, succeeded in driving off the edge of the speedway and dropping the eight miles to ground, interrupting the flow of hover-vehicles halfway down in the process, and racking up another six million deaths. News broadcasts on the accident ran for a full twenty second, until the next day, when it was found that Lady Hishagishishima of Jurai's pet dog, Juluis, had died in the incident.  
A day of mourning was declared and a statue now stands at the site where Juluis died, depicting where such a brave and heroic animal was cut down in its prime.  
Juraians have it too good, really.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

I own most of the stuff. That which I don't, I don't. Clever, eh? AIC & Pioneer own Tenchi Muyo! Star Wars is owned by Lucasarts. References to L. Ron Hubbard are obviously owned by L. Ron Hubbard and his Church of Scientology. This is parody, so none of you can sue me. Watch me laugh! Lock, Stock... is owned by Guy Ritchie (probably). Song names, lyrics etc. are copyright of their owner and is in no way an attack on that person or group. So lighten up!

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

**Special Thanks To:**

**_Negative-Z_** (This story was meant to be a writer's block breaking exercise... NOOOO! Over-ambition! NOOOO!)  
_**Bob-R**_ (For keeping me amused and entertained for a very, very, very long time)  
L**_edzepfan_** (For... writing. And other stuff; like proof-reading)  
_**Metallica_Wedo**_ (I hope I spelt that right)  
**_All The Other Readers Out there_** (For reading this)


	2. Waterway Hounds

**A/N Alpha Romero:-** Any footnotes [written as numbers in brackets (or parenthesis, if you're American), following a word, phrase, sentence etc. etc.] should be read posthaste. Missing such notes may result in complete misunderstanding of the fic or, in severe cases, death.

**A/N Juliet Papa:-** I'm sorry about the rudeness in this story. It's not big, it's not clever, and... well, is it funny? I don't know. If I did I'd probably be published by now and you'd be thumbing through this in paperback, not on a screen. So... if you're under 13 and you don't know about... men and women... kissing an' all that, then don't read this. It's just not right. Really.  
You've been warned, I don't want no comebacks. I'm fed up with people's parents emailing me and telling me I should stop... doing what I do. It's not as if I video camera them though. I only... take Polaroid's. That's, that's... well, that's legal.  
They were all over 18... Believe me. I'm not lying. No matter what the police say... I'm right. And I know what I did was completely within my rights. That's... what I based this on. The fact that it's art, not... not what they keep calling it. It's art, man. So if I don't update for a while, you'll know where I am...  
(Yeah. Brixton Prison -ed)

ENJOY!

- - - - - - - - - - - -

* * * * *

**LOCK, STOCK AND THREE SOJA GEMS**

"I'm hungry. Let's get a taco."

* * * * *

Galaxy Police Cruiser 1-45-A4 'GREEN EMERALD' ploughed a gentle route through the cosmos. 

Contrary to its name, the GREEN EMERALD was not, in fact green. It was also fair to assume that, if this was the case, it was not an emerald. It was, however, a very large, very streamlined and very top-of-the-range piece of apparatus. It gave the impression that if it had a genetic ancestry, dolphins and other aquatic animals with bottle-nosed proboscises had played a large part in it.

Onboard, its crew of eight lazed around with the buoyant authority that came after a job well done. Eight people might have seemed a little understaffed for a cruiser that had enough fire-power to obliterate a small fleet and the planet it had come from, not to mention the fact it was ferrying something a little more special than the usual rubbish accumulated from a drug bust, but there were two reasons for this; The first was that no one in their right mind would think of trying to hijack a police craft. The second reason was that the GP didn't want to tempt fate by attracting too much attention to the first fact.

The Refiu Asteroid Belt bisected the sector in a sort of rocky wall before it, stretching across its path. Slowly, the ship's boosters ignited rotating the craft on its axis and in what would be a gradual arc around the rocky spread before dipping back into its original path towards Precinct 9.

Questions as to whether it would ever get there were hardly on the agenda.

* * * * *

"So, would someone mind telling me the plan?"

Grimm planted his hands on the table in front of him and leant across it, looking at Orifati. "Here," he pointed at the holographic map, "Is the asteroid belt that runs between Altioc and the Outer Plains. Deep Space Precinct 9 is here, about six light-years behind it."  
"Therefore GREEN EMERALD is here," finished Kras, pointing at a single grid reference.  
"So, what's the plan?" asked Orifati again.

The trio were standing in the Control Room of the KOCORREL, which in turn was standing (or at least, situated) somewhere in the depths of space between the asteroid belt and their quarry. The slap-dash flight from Belatius hadn't been the most restful experience, especially when six civilian transport ships had locked onto their flight beacon in the mistaken belief that it was a _landing_ beacon, which was something else entirely.

"The GREEN EMERALD is a GP Cruiser, so it's got be equipped with ram-shields," said Kras, completely ignoring Orifati's outburst. "It's likely it'll go through the asteroid belt. That'll shave six hours off its arrival time."  
Grim shook his head. "No Galaxy Police ship would exchange time for danger." He brought his hand down to the control panel at the hologram's base and plotted in a new course. "The ship will go around."  
"Through!" said Kras roughly. He reached for his own controls and replotted the course.  
"Around!"  
"Through!"

"Ladies!" cried Orifati. The two men stopped bickering. "Why," he asked, "are we using Holographic Battleships, the fun game for ages three and up, to plan the biggest heist since Goddess knows when?"  
Krass looked back at him stiffly. "It's the best thing we could find in the allotted time. And it was cheap at twenty credits."

"We get 500 creds each up front and you spend twenty of it on a child's game?" said Orifati. He shook his head in disparaged embarrassment. "Amateurs. I'm with freakin' amateurs."  
"At least I bought something useful, rather than spending it on some painted harlot," Kras glowered back.  
"We only had an hour and a half to get as much kit as we needed, so I didn't," Orifati said, "I like to get my money's worth, if you catch my drift." He smiled and undid the button on his bomber-jacket's sleeve, rolling the fabric down to his elbow. Strapped around his arm, just below the joint of his arm, was a dark green roll of cloth. He removed it and, holding the corners like a matador baiting a bull, flicked it harshly.  
The cloth unravelled to display a collection of hooked, pronged and generally pointy looking instruments.  
"Lockpicks," he said, as he wound the cloth back up, "are useful." He nodded at the game on the table, his éclat and blow-dried locks bouncing delicately atop his head. "Children's toys, are not useful."

"Where did you get them from?" asked Grimm.  
Orifati finished wrapping the cloth around his arm and sighed. "The simple, basic, normal, everyday way you get lockpicks." He shrugged as if it were so obvious that it didn't even deserve wasting breath on the answer.  
"Which is?" asked Grimm.  
"A locksmiths."  
"You bought them from a locksmiths?"  
"Not technically bought them. I borrowed them."  
"You stole them from a locksmiths? How?"  
Orifati shook his head in despair. "The simple, basic, normal, everyday way you borrow stuff from a locksmiths."  
"WHICH IS?" snapped Kras.  
"I picked the lock," Orifati answered. He buttoned up the sleeve and looked at the other men.  
"You mean to say," said Grimm quietly, "that you picked the lock to the locksmiths, without tools, then sneaked in and stole a set of lockpicks?"

There was a long, uncomfortable silence.

"It sounds really dumb when you say it," stated Orifati. He slid over to the table self-consciously. "So, uh, what's the plan?"

The two men at the Battleships board sighed loudly and went back to the shimmering image between them. "We should be getting into radar range of the GREEN EMERALD within the next hour or so," said Grimm, "but the question is; which way it's going to go.  
"If it goes around the asteroid belt," his finger stabbed at a row of very realistic looking little boulders at 1:25 scale, "then we'll be in the open while we run it down, and I don't fancy our chances against a cruiser in open space. Plus, we'll only have an hour, at most, to get whatever it is that Arikaan wants. Then again, I'd rather risk that and actually get a _ chance_ at blagging it."

"However," Kras said, turning to look at Orifati, "if the GREEN EMERALD goes through the asteroid field it'll be easier to get the job done because its communications and evasive maneuvers will be cut down. But in turn, we'll have a harder time following it in, due to the fact that our friendly Juraian legislator appears to have forgotten to fit this thing with ram shields. Therefore it's a toss-up between lurking in the asteroids and seeing whether they come through, or hanging around outside the asteroid belt and trying to get the job done before reinforcements arrive."  
Orifati nodded slowly, deep in thought. "Right. So what are ram shields?"  
Kras and Grimm raised their hands to whatever deity might be watching them at that time. Kras' eyes moved downwards again to take in Orifati's face. "Just for the record: Are you always this stupid or did you take lessons?"  
"I'm a safe-cracker, not a pilot," replied the thief, "I blow banks, not spaceships!"  
"Wearing clothes like that I'd be surprised if that's all you blow."   
Orifati ripped the sunglasses off his face. His finger pointed at the scientist as though as it were about to go off. "Unless you want to be opening whatever safe is on that cruiser yourself, I recommend telling me what ram shields are..." The digit, aimed right at Kras' head, stabbed at air. "Right _NOW!_"

Kras opened his mouth, then shut it again. He sighed. "Ram shields are a variation of energy shields, designed in the early fifth centenary. It turns kinetic energy into light or sound energy, thereby dispersing its effect. Hitting anything larger than dust at chase speeds will probably punch a hole through the hull. Ram shield allows a craft to travel at higher speeds through dust rings, asteroid belts, debris coronas. The sort of things we'd want to go through. Answered?"  
"Yeah. Thanks."  
The scientist and the pirate exchanged bemused looks and went back to looking at the holo-board, deep in thought.

"How much range do GP communicators have?" asked Orifati suddenly. The rest of the trio looked up.  
"Six light-years, give or take," said Grimm. "Maybe eight if there's something to bounce it off. Why?"  
"And how much in an asteroid field?"  
Grimm pulled a face and looked at Kras, "About half?"  
"Yes. Around three," nodded Kras. He looked up at Orifati and raised his eyebrows. "An idea?"  
"And we can go into the asteroid field, right?" asked the thief, his eyes suddenly bright.  
"As long as we're not planning on moving too fast, yes. What-"  
"So we could, like, hide in the asteroid field and broadcast a message that would lure them in. But then they wouldn't be able to call for help once they're inside?" Orifati asked.  
Grimm and Kras looked at each other, then looked back at the thief. "What sort of message would lure a Galaxy Police cruiser into an asteroid belt?"  
"A distress signal?" forwarded Orifati.

Kras steepled his hands on the table and breathed a very sorry sigh. Then he began to speak, "It is an idea, yes. However, there are two niggling, but nevertheless rather intrusive, quandaries about that plan:  
"Number one; it is the oldest trick in the book. Probably even older than the one where the magician puts the card into the deck backwards.  
"And number two; you need a ship that looks like it's in distress."

The other men opened their mouths to say something, but his eyebrows waggled in demonstration that he was only joking.

"Nevertheless," he said, "the reason that Galaxy Police officers are described as being as thick as two short planks is not for unduly erroneous reasons.(1) And even if we gave this ship a quick vacuum and put up new drapes, it would still look it had been involved in a pub brawl and lost. Badly.  
"I think we may, therefore, have a suitably apropos stratagem to get this little task over and done with."

A tight-lipped smirk drew itself across Grimm's face. "Marvellous."

* * * * *

Acting-Captain Alvero Masson lounged in his bridge chair and raised the teacup in an imaginary toast to some imaginary official. "Good job," the imaginary official didn't say, while not wearing a grin that showed his complete and total respect and appraisal of Masson's abilities.  
"Oh, it's nothing really," Masson failed to reply, as the imaginary official gave him a non-existent pat on the back.  
"But it is! But it is!" didn't come the acknowledgement, "to think we've been leaving you out of a command position for so many years, Alvaro... You don't mind if I call you Alvero, do you?"

"Of course not," said Masson, and lowered the teacup back down to its saucer carefully, so that the ship's logo faced outwards toward the rest of the bridge. The helmswoman looked around from her console to stare up at him. "Did you say something, sir?"  
"No, no," flustered Masson, realising he'd been caught out on his daydreaming again, "I was just..."   
He tried to sit up and give himself a bit of decorum, but managed to knock the cup in the process, and spill tea over his leg of his trousers. He gave a pained yelp and sat the half-full cup on the arm of his chair.

In embarrassment he rubbed at his trousers with his hand, the hot liquid beginning to sear at his skin. _Great move. Pure genius! How Captain-like was that?_ He saw the helmswoman swivel back to her console, and he saw the slight sneer on her feminine features. He moved, his rotund bulk causing the chair to creek in distress, and looked around the bridge. What with all the consoles facing toward the massive viewscreen, which was displaying the Refiu Asteroid Belt, no one else appeared to have noticed his little accident. _ Well, they'd better not have..._

It was quite a beautiful craft. Ship-of-the-line. Not too classy but not too basic. Just the right amount of awe to tell people that the police had arrived, but not enough to make people wonder why their taxes were being spent on gilding and gold. It was Masson's idea of what a good ship should be like, and seeing as how it was his first time in charge of such a behemoth, he was really quite enjoying it.  
Whether his superiors would let him have another go at it was another matter entirely.  
He'd actually been on the Shunga once, before it got blown up of course. That had been nice too, and he'd have loved to have taken it out for a spin, but with its stealthy theft from the shipyards at Kunhauser (he was grateful it was the dock's blunder rather than a Galaxy Police one) had put paid to that. Thankfully they'd caught the madman who did it. Dr. Mud was it? Professor Adobe?  
Whatever his name was, he'd certainly get his comeuppance for stealing Masson's ship.  
_Oh yes._

"Captain." The communications technician swivelled on his chair to face him.  
Masson ignored the man for a moment, just to get across how important he was, then looked down from his raised dais at the crewmember. "Mr. Luchu?"  
"_Officer_ Luchu," replied the communications technician. He looked back at his console, "I'm picking up a communication from another ship, sir."  
"Really, _Mister_ Luchu." Masson looked at the man a little more sternly, trying to keep the facade of a strong-willed Captain alive. His leg began to throb tenderly. "And what is it?"  
"A distress signal from a transport ship, sir, the DISINGENUOUS PRETEXT. It lost engine power and got pulled into the asteroid field. They're losing oxygen and are asking for assistance."

The other five crewmembers looked up from their work at the mention of 'distress' and 'assistance'.  
"Cool," said the helmswoman, or rather something that, in her language, was remarkably similar to the Earth based colloquialism.  
Masson's face screwed up in concentration. A distress signal was the most important call that any ship could get and anyone within range was meant to give aid. There were even cases of pirates and other criminals helping a stricken ship _without plundering it_. What you reap is what you sow, as they say, and no one wanted to be trapped in deep space for longer than necessary.

There was however, one problem; Masson's orders were to stop for nobody. NOBODY. If, let us put forward a hypothetical theory here, he had stumbled across the entire Royal Household of Jurai choking to death on a methane leak in their ship, he would have gone right past without the barest whisper of pulling over and lending a helping hand.(2)   
"_Do not_," had been the chief's communiqué, "_stop for anything. Whatsoever. At all_."

Masson's eye twitched in the way that it always did when he was thinking. "No," he said finally, "tell them we'll send a rescue craft once we're within hailing distance of our rendezvous site."  
"Yes, sir." The communications technician returned to his console and spoke into it.   
He looked back at Masson. "They say that they're all going to die... And they hope you can live with that."  
"Really?"  
"Yes sir..." The technician looked around, his face flushed, "and, speaking frankly, sir, I don't think I can have that kind of stain on my conscience."

Masson nodded sagely. "No," he said, "nor on my résumé..." There was another brief flutter of the eyelid. He sighed deeply and then gave another nod, "We're going to need to help them. Damn the orders!"  
The bridge crew returned their approval.  
Leaning forward, Masson spoke again, his voice strong and commanding. "Hail the ship, Mr. Luchu, and tell them we're on our way." He pressed a button on the arm of his chair, managing to knock his teacup to the floor with a resounding crash and splosh. "All hands, all hands. This is the captain speaking. We are changing course to aid a distressed vessel, under Space-Faring Code 34, Sub-Paragraph, uh, 5... Prepare for the taking on of injured parties." He released the button.  
"Helmswoman, plot a route for the... uh, distressed ship."  
"Plotted, sir," came the woman's reply.

"Make it so," Massan said, his finger sweeping in a curve to point at the viewscreen.

* * * * *

The boosters that GREEN EMERALD had turned on in its original flight plan shut off leaving a trail of half-burned fuel particles in its wake. Then, with a silent wail that built into an equally silent roar, the boosters on the other side of the craft kicked in. The ship turned quickly, kicking space-dust and atoms of helium behind it as it did so.  
There was another deep and extremely silent boom, that would have, if there had been atmosphere, shattered windows like sugar cubes under a sledgehammer.

Galaxy Police Cruiser 1-45-A4 'GREEN EMERALD' ploughed a speedy route through the cosmos.

* * * * *

**CHAPTER 3:-  
POLICE AND THIEVES**

Inside the Refiu field, a relatively large, relatively blue spacecraft sat huddled behind a very large, very asteroid-like asteroid. Sparks flickered as its basic shield-system caught the tiny dust particles and reduced them to light energy. A larger piece, the size of a football, punched through the electromagnetic pulses and dragged itself along the ship's metalwork. Paint chippings floated off into space, white and blue, and left KOCORRLL staring blankly out into the darkness.

It eased itself back gently, its front-end swinging outwards to collide with a cloud of its own dismembered paint. In the silence it hid itself, and below it something huge and shiny and with a long nose swept tentatively through.

When it had passed, the KOCORRLL dropped down and followed...

* * * * *

A cratered and pitted boulder of iron ore and rock loped across the GREEN EMERALD's viewscreen. It span a teetering pirouette before colliding with another asteroid, one that would have been large enough to swallow much of South America beneath its girth, and sending fragments of debris outwards in an explosion of dust.  
The ship ducked below the worst of it, lumps of metal flicking off its ram shields and shattering into smaller pieces. A handful of fragnents penetrated and scraped like buckshot across the paintwork.

The deck crew watched their instruments attentively. Every so often one of them would raise their eyes to the main viewscreen and give it a quick scan, trying to pick out any sign.  
_No sign._  
Masson didn't bother picking out signs, but instead picked at the arm of his chair in sullen silence. The ship had been moving through the asteroid field for the last twenty minutes, slowed to the equivalent of a crawl. Communications so badly interfered with that no outside help could be mustered. The sensors haywire from all the untapped metals floating around outside their thin shelled, pressurised, seductress of a ship. And for what?  
'In aid of another', had been Masson's rallying cry. And now he where was he?

_I'll tell you where you are, ACTING-CAPTAIN Masson... You're lost in an asteroid field... LOST!_

His fingernails dragged painfully across the PA-system's control panel. "Any sign of that ship?" he asked loudly. "Or a break in the asteroids?"  
There was an uncomfortable hush, which was curious because the room was nearly silent in the first place. The tang of strong black coffee with three sugars and a pinch of lemon hung in the air.   
"Well?" he asked.  
The uncomfortable hush became an agonising silence.  
"Well?"

From somewhere outside the hull there was another clang as a large piece of asteroid went through the ram shield.

  
Masson pressed ahead, the last vestiges of leadership fleeing him. In his mind's eye he saw the imaginary official rip the rank-badge from him, fling it to the ground, stamp it under-heel.  
_ "Fool! How can you get lost in an asteroid field? And only a half-dozen light-years from a star base?"  
"But it wasn't my fault! I was helping another ship-"  
"-Against orders! A non-existent ship that you had no right to follow in the first place!"  
_ "DAMN IT! IT'S NOT MY FAULT!"

The rest of the bridge crew turned in their chairs and looked at him. "Sir?" asked the helmswoman politely, and Masson was sure he saw that same conceited smirk on her face as before.

"Oh BLEEP off, you stupid BLEEP" he snapped. 

Then he blinked and went through what he'd just said. Shocked faces of the rest of the crew stared back at him, the helmswoman's face dancing a mix between 'weepy-distress' and 'wait until I write a report on this male-chauvinistic act'.  
"Get back to work, please," he said carefully. They turned back slowly, and he got the distinct feeling that they expected him to pull a gun on them. He rubbed his eyes tiredly, illusions of grandeur gone. "What else can go wrong?" he whispered to himself, as he heard the sound of the turbolift open at the back of the room.  
He started turning around, then stopped as a voice laced with hate spat from behind him;

"Don't any of you pigs move!" snapped the voice, "I'm holding a Kintari General Issue blaster, which as you should know can fire one-hundred and twenty bolts a second. That means that if you were to try and charge me all at once, you would get no further than three feet from your current sitting position. I will use it if necessary.   
"If any of you feel the need to turn around, play with buttons and alarms, or generally BLEEP me off, you will all die. If I am making myself clear, please sit on your hands, shut up, and enjoy the fact that no one will be hurt if no one tries to be a hero."

Kras waited a moment to see if anyone would make a move. The gullibility of these people was mind-boggling, and he smiled as the six crewmen lowered their hands and slid them beneath their buttocks. When his charges had done as they had been told, Kras' hands reached into different pockets in his grubby uniform. The right one removed a pair of red-handled wire cutters. The other brought out the manual on bioelectronics.  
Still keeping his eyes locked on the police officers, he reached over his shoulder with the wire cutter clenching hand and deftly opened a near invisible junction box built into the wall. Inside a spaghetti tangle of wires looped and ran from top to bottom. A hundred colours and thickness. There was a dull click as the cutters snipped one of the wires in half, followed by a second click as another was dissected.  
The wire cutters disappeared back into the pocket, and he finally let his gaze drop down to the book in his hands. He flicked through to where he had got up to and settled back for a light read.

* * * * *

The sheer elegance of the operation was breathtaking. Six minutes of planning, no rehearsals, and they'd taken control of the ship. It had to be a record, thought Grimm, as he kept the blaster pointed at the head, which was attached to the policeman five or six yards down the corridor. The officer was wearing the pale blue uniform of a ship's crewman, his hands held high above his fez like hat, and he had two belts around his waist. The last part was rather strange, because Grimm had never needed to wear two belts before, even after one of those famous Juraian Thanksgiving meals that even the six-stomached Garysian's swore about.(3) Then he noted the holster. "Take off the utility belt," he called out.  
"Whatever you say, sir."  
Grimm gave a quick glance at the officer's partner who was lying on the floor by his feet, a bright red lump beginning to swell on his temple where the butt of the blaster had hit. The idiot would listen next-time he was told not to turn around. Grimm prodded the immobile body with a booted foot, just to check he was really unconscious.  
He was.

"Hold the belt out at arm's length to the side and then drop it. No quick moves," called out Grimm. He moved closer, gun still aimed.  
The policeman complied, the sound of the utility belt hitting the polished corridor floor echoed and roared in the silence like a death-metal band's bass-line. Grimm moved up to the man, pressed the gun a few inches from the small of the man's back. "Kneel on the floor and put your hands behind you. Do not turn around or look behind you."  
"Whatever you say, sir," said the officer again, as if it was nothing more frightening than a walk in the park.(6) As cool as a cucumber that had been moulded out of liquid nitrogen and encased in a block of dry ice he knelt.

Grimm picked up the utility belt as the other man sat. Handcuffs. Blaster. Energy packs. Various compartments for evidence bags and police equipment. Keeping the gun held to the back of the officer's head, Grimm removed the handcuffs from their pouch and knelt down, snapping them around the man's wrists. He stood back up and turned around to look at the massive vault door behind which their prize, whatever it was.  
It was a large door, but then again it was in a suitably large corridor, so the effect was somehow diminished. It matched the bulkhead's 'ocean-blue' colour scheme, although it didn't have the red stripe running parallel to the floor and ceiling.  
_"Excuse me?"_  
The metal on its catches glinted magnificently in its chrome finished splendour. Twenty-three inches thick of burnished and painted titanium-steel alloy, with a Kevlar interior and guard around the edges. The enormous deadbolts that traversed its length, slid into place like gargantuan cylindrical... cylinders.  
"Excuse me?"  
And attached to it was the access node. A fifty button keypad with palm reader, digital sensor and electronic pheromone tracker. Overlay that with a 32,000,000 cred defence mechanism and you had a very flashy piece of kit. One that Orifati was even now pondering over. He stood thoughtfully, rubbing his nose with his thumb and forefinger as he looked at the system.  
"Excuse me?"  
He took his sunglasses off and slid them into his top pocket. Then he took out his lockpicks. His fingers danced over them delicately, as though they were something to be cherished. A thin metal pick, hooked and slender, slid out of the cloth and set to work on the keypad.

"EXCUSE ME?"  
Grimm and Orifati span around. The lockpick hit the floor with a clatter.  
"I'm sorry," said the officer, who was still sitting on the floor with his back to them, "but I was trying to tell you; I can undo these handcuffs." He held the opened pair of handcuffs out behind him, so that Grimm could take them.  
"Er, thanks," said Grimm. He gingerly collected the handcuffs out the man's unresisting hand. He looked around at Orifati, and pulled a worried face.  
"I learnt how to undo them without the key," said the officer. "I wouldn't be able to do that with my partner's, though."  
"That's... very helpful," replied Grimm. He walked backwards to the other, slightly less talkative policeman, and took his handcuffs. He recuffed the kneeling officer.  
"Well, I'd rather you did it properly and I don't get shot," said the officer sincerely. "Might I suggest you handcuff my partner with my handcuffs?" Grimm, feeling a bit of a fool, sidled over and did as had been offered.  
"You have to excuse Jajeedi," said the officer, "he's a bit headstrong. I always tell him to chill out, but he seems to think he's a super-being or something."

Orifati bent down and picked up the lockpick. "For someone who's got a gun to their head, he's taking this well, in't he?" It was directed at Grimm, but the officer replied.  
"I'm trained for this sort of thing," he said, still not bothering to look around. "Do as you're told, don't mess about, give them what they want and you'll walk out alive."  
"They have lessons on that at the Galaxy Police?" asked Grimm.  
The policeman shook his head. "Oh no. I've only been on the force three months. I was a bank clerk for sixteen years though."  
"Oh?" Orifati grunted and got back to work on the vault door.  
"Oh yeah. Got held up eight times in four days. It got so bad that management thought about inserting a revolving-door just for the robbers. Eventually I decided to resign. Take up something a little less dangerous."  
"Galaxy Police?" said Grimm half to himself.  
"Mine clearance," sniffed the officer. "But they wouldn't take me on. Over qualified."  
Orifati messed around with the keys for a few more seconds and then looked back at their captive. "What bank was it?"  
"Itanian Inter-Galactic Bank, on Kenhauser." The officer continued, "Y'know, the third moon of Oitas."

Orifati's eyes widened. "Really! I broke into that once!"  
"Honest?"  
"Oh yeah!" Orifati put the lockpick behind his ear and nodded, "There was a skylight which dropped right down into the foyer, covered with trip-lasers. I had to abseil in and go between them-"  
Grimm turned and gave him the evil eye. "Yes, Mr. Green, thank you. Why not tell the nice policeman what your name is and where you come from as well?"  
"It's Mr. Grey." The safe-breaker ripped the pick from behind his ear and returned to the keypad.  
"What?"  
Orifati pressed a couple of buttons, which bleeped for no apparent reason. "I'm Mr. Grey. Not Mr. Green."  
"Then who's Mr. Green?"  
"There isn't one. I'm Mr. Grey. You're Mr. Black. And Kr- ... The one upstairs is Mr. White." He sniffed loudly and took out another lockpick, jiggled it in a card slot under the buttons.  
"Are you sure?" asked Grimm. He thought about it. "Wasn't it Red, Blue and Green?"

Orifati's head rotated to face him slowly. "Red, blue and green?" He shook his head in exasperation. "That's the Juraian flag!"  
"Erm... excuse me," came a quiet voice from behind them. "Don't you think you should gag or blind me? And I'd recommend stopping me from listening as well."  
The space pirate's face became suddenly quite irritated. "That'd be a good idea." He walked toward the kneeling policeman, raising the blaster like a club.

"Well, in my utility belt I've got some plumber's tape," continued the policeman chirpily, "For emergencies and things. If you put a strip of it across my mouth I wouldn't be able to-"

* * * * *

_"Note how the cartilage in the bone cavity (fig. 4.d) has been moulded into a new shape by the application of pressure. If this were to be looked at in a biomechanical way considerations should be taken for the physics of the interior and exterior (fig. 5). Due to this morphing of the body, certain interesting changes to gravitational centre and movement have been made, needing the owner's compensation. Take note of the ungainly walk and movement (fig. 6)-"_

Kras licked his finger and used it to thumb forward a few more pages. It had started off amusing. However, the comedy value of the book (written by a supposed Academy lecturer no less!) was beginning to wear thin. He had to stifle a laugh as he hit a paragraph that was so completely and patently untrue that he felt like throwing the book away.  
"You won't get away with this."  
Kras looked up. "Pardon?" And then realising where he was, he said more loudly and gruffly, "What the BLEEP did you just say?"  
"I said, 'You won't get away with this," repeated the captain. It was the first time anyone had spoken since the takeover and the man sat forward in his chair, but made no move to turn around.  
Kras closed the book. "Shut up!" he growled, surprisingly intimidating, "I'm not the one sitting there with my hands under my arse." The book went back in the pocket.  
"What do you think you're going to achieve by doing this?" called the captain with an underlying terrified squeakiness.  
"Watching you die, maybe?"  
When nothing more was forthcoming Kras shook his head and, grimacing, looked down at the bridge crew. Babysitting wasn't his forte. He looked at his watch, a move that was entirely unnecessary because he knew the current time to the barest fraction of a second. Twenty minutes had passed...  
"Come on," he muttered, "how long does it take to crack a safe?"

* * * * *

"Give me another five minutes," said Orifati. He had taken his jacket off, and his undershirt was soaked dark with sweat, brought about by the halcyon lights that were dotted at regular intervals along the corridor's ceiling. The keypad's front had been removed and now it transpired it had been a sort of red-herring. None of the buttons actually did anything, but the pad was on a hinge and behind it was an honest-to-goodness, genuine, old-fashioned, metal key lock. The sort of thing that backwater planets used because they hadn't worked out how to make DNA sensors.  
To the common-or-garden criminal, it looked like an impregnable and unconscionably complex thing.  
To Orifati it looked like what it was; a little hole with a lot of funny shaped metal blocks inside.  
The lockpicks moved like an enhancement of his own limbs. Prodding, touching gently, and then stabbing where necessary to hold back a pin or move a part of the lock's anatomy. There was no safe that he could not break. No lock he could not pick. No door or room he could not enter. He was the opposite of Harry Houdini; whereas that man had been the greatest escapologist, Orifati was the greatest in-scapeologist.

"You said 'give me two minutes' five minutes ago," growled Grimm, who was wrapping thick black tape around the unconscious policemen's eyes, mouths and ears so that they looked like some tar-dipped mummy. He got up and walked over to the vault door.  
"This is a tricky lock," replied Orifati. There was a tiny click from the door's innards. "And I haven't done this sort of thing since I got out of jail. So don't annoy me, okay?"  
"And how long ago was that? Six months? A year?"  
Another click, and Orifati stopped to wipe his forehead with his arm. "Nine months."  
"See, I've been out of this game for fourteen years. I come back in and I'm doing what I've always done. You leave for nine months and now you're having trouble with a lock."  
Orifati turned, leaving the lockpicks half in the lock. "I sort of notice." He looked at the two unconscious police officers. "But there's a difference between BLEEPING people upside the head with a pistol-whip and playing with tumblers. I plan my breaks four or five months in advance. I case the place. I prepare. You... you pick a nice looking ship, shoot its engines out and then steal everything." He went back to the lockpicks. "I'm not dissing you or anything. It's a different sort of skill, that's all."   
He smiled brightly, "Just one more pin to do."

Grimm watched as the other man's hands worked feverishly on the two pieces of thin metal. Sweat stood out on Orifati's forehead, and he licked his lips as somewhere inside the door there was a subtle click. His eyes widened.  
A louder click.  
"Damn," he said quietly. His fingers left the slivers of metal and rubbed at the droplets of sweat on his neck. "I just broke the pick." He stood up straight and shook his head sadly, grabbing the coat from his feet as he did. 

"I guess we'd better go straight to the explosives."

* * * * *

For a while there was silence. Then there was a cataclysmic boom and the ship shook wildly, as if some giant and terrible hand had slapped it with all its strength. In the galley the pots and pans tumbled from their hooks, the plates and glassware falling from the shelves to lay around them in sharp piles. Down in the crew quarters, belongings and personal possessions jumped and lay strewn on the floor. On the bridge, the crew's teeth rattled in their heads as the shockwave passed up through the lower decks' bulkheads, through the floor and up their chairs.  
Invisible to the naked eye, but easily felt, the air pressure increased and the blast wave it created pressed forward in a ripple-like fashion from its epicentre. Quickly, in concentric waves, it sped outwards, rebounding off the walls of the corridor and changing the internal pressure of the ship in a roar that sped onwards and outwards.  
A handful of the less well made bulkheads bulged lightly under the caress of the wave, bending and then moving in again as it passed along.

Down on the cargo deck the smoke began to clear. A wall of dust and debris, thick and white disappeared into the emergency filters which upon sensing the resulting fire had turned on. Along the corridor minute electronics triggered themselves, sending currents along their wires and triggering the fire-suppressant system. The sprinklers turned on, spraying _Flame-B-Gone_ liquid(7) down into the last vestiges of dust and debris.  
Within seconds, the corridor turned a milky white as the newly formed sludge stuck to whatever it touched. Slowly it solidifyed into a porous substance that was actually chemically related (although this was unknown to its intergalactic creators) to Kellogg's Pop-Tarts.

From the end of the corridor, just outside the reach of the sprinklers and dust, Grimm lowered the umbrella he was holding and gave it a quick jiggle to get rid of the paste that was setting to its canvas. Beside him Orifati did the the same, although he proved more desperate to dispel the muck. He beat the umbrella against the wall and showered the floor with even more white. He looked at Grimm and gave a crooked half-smile, more a sympathetic gesture than anything else.  
Grimm sighed. "Explosives," he said. He looked at the massive mess in the wall, further down the corridor. The door still stood where it had always been, but now its looked unstable. It sagged in the middle, its hinges visibly loose and the massive bolts were attempting to roll through the fire-retardant foam, although with little luck. The metal doorframe had fused and warped, bent outwards into pronged segments and twisted shapes.  
By some quirk of nature, the fake-keypad had ricocheted off the wall opposite and embedded itself into the ceiling, completely intact.

It beeped sadly, for no apparent reason.

Past all that were two outcroppings in the lather. They looked vaguely human and the foam rose and fell gently, as though it were breathing.  
"Explosives," Grimm said again and nodded as if it were the most simple thing in the world. "Now why didn't I think of that?"  
Orifati sniffed thoughtfully. He gazed at the door, which looked like it would fall over if subjected to a particularly harsh word. Then shook his head, and as if taking in the scene for the first time, his eyes roved over to the two buried police officers. He thought about about what the hell would be making it move and then, very slowly, his face took on the expression of someone who was surprised. He looked at Grimm. "Will they be okay?" he asked.  
It took a few moments for Grimm to work out who he was talking about. He too stared at the lumps. "Probably," he said, a pang of guilt hitting him. He pushed that aside.  
"Just probably?" _Worried_.  
Grimm looked at the safe-breaker as impassively as possible. "I don't know _exactly_. I don't usually cover people in fire-foam." The other man's face went slightly paler, no mean feat with the amount of tan, and Grimm got the impression he was going to either going to cry or go and try to dig them out.  
"But they are breathing," he said, a little more lightly, "so I'd say there's a good chance they'll live."

They waded their way through the debris and paste to the door which, without the illusions from the last traces of smoke and the distance, looked like a modern art masterpiece. Orifati kept an eye on the mounds of moving white.  
They could have simply kicked open the door there and then and taken whatever it was they needed, picked up Kras, run back to the KOCORREL and escaped into the cold depths of space. No fuss. No worries. In and out.  
The two men looked at each other. They looked at the door, which was attempting, albeit with the barest success, to hold itself upright. They looked at each other again, and Grimm suddenly realised that they were both scared. Terribly, dangerously, upsettingly scared. In fact, he could only remember two times when he had been as scared as this. The first was when he had started his career. The second was...  
"It's all yours, Ringo," said Orifati hollowly. The bravado that had been around originally, and had hung about in little clouds during his vault-breaking exercise, appeared to have dispersed into the ether. His arm flapped at the door, then dropped back to his side.  
Grimm put on his 'imperious criminal' voice. "Open it."  
Orifati made a move to argue but saw his partner's face. He pressed closer to the door and gingerly reached out...

The door collapsed without him even touching it. 

And the glow swam out. It fell about them like liquid gold, bright and shining, and even from behind Orifati, Grimm could feel the light warming his face. He stepped forward to stand next in the doorway, eyes trying to fix on the thing inside.  
_What is it? What is it?  
_He stopped next to the safe-breaker, finally getting a clear view. He felt his jaw fall open.  
"Is that what I think it is?" asked the Tanma Thief, whose legs were buckling.  
Grimm nodded: _yes_.  
"It's beautiful."  
Grimm nodded: _yes_.

They stood there for quite some time, faces bathed in gold.

Finally Grimm ran his fingers through his hair. "That's..." He searched for a phrase to describe the poetic beauty that he was seeing, "... certainly _something_."  
"Well, Arikaan did say he wanted a certain _something_," replied Orifati, and then as if woken from a stupor his eyes danced with energy. He smiled, the ego returning, "And as the actress said to the priest, 'Goddess, that's huge!'" Face shining, he pointed at Grimm. "You go prep the ship, I'll get something to move that thing with." He handed the umbrellas to the pirate and stood silhouetted against the golden brightness, hands on hips.

It was only after Grimm had sprinted off that Orifati began to wonder where he was going to find anything large enough to move the _something_ with. And more importantly, was it safe to go anywhere near something that glowed like that?

* * * * *

Grimm ran down the corridor from Airlock-6, where the KOCORREL had patiently waited. His shoes slapped loudly against the floor, flakes of foam leaving a second trail to the one he had left when he had last passed through. And he was exhilarated.  
Feelings were flooding back to him, feelings that he hadn't felt for a long time. Some of them weren't particularly nice; anger, paranoia, a steady sprinkling of fear. Then there were others... Crime was one of those things that could do that to you, more than anything else.  
Complete, bloody-minded, enjoyment. It was the thrill of the chase, the excitement in the catch and, more importantly, the satisfaction in the final. 

The GREEN EMERALD's corridors were long and tall and wide, with multi-coloured stripes along the floor and bulkheads, which split off at junctions and led to various parts of the ship. Red for engine. Green for bridge. Gold for medical bay. White paste deposits for the cargo hold. He skidded around another corner, coat flapping behind him. 

"What the hells are you doing?"

Grimm span around. Marching toward him, red-hair hanging limp around his ears, was Kras. His eyes smouldered. "What the devils are you doing? I'm trying to keep that lot up there from pressing some alarms, and you're raising hell!"  
"What the BLEEP are _you_ doing down here?" cried Grimm, "you're meant to be keeping an eye on them!" He checked over the boy's head, expecting a policeman to be following.  
Kras waved his hand irritably. "Bah! They don't even know I'm gone." He looked at the trail of flakes and the pirate's boots, his eyebrows arching precariously. "Have you thought about changing your conditioner?" he asked.  
"It's fire-retardant foam, not dandruff."  
The eyes widened to fit their brows. "You were starting fires?"  
"Explosives."  
"Explosives? So that was... What rank amateur uses explosives on a ship?"  
"It wasn't me."  
"But you didn't exactly stop him, did you?!" The younger man's voice rose an octave, "Don't you think they can trace that stuff? Where did he get it? Is it military grade?"  
"I don't know." Grimm looked over his shoulder, checking for a non-existent Orifati. "Anyway, we're getting out. There's no point in hanging around here now we've got it."

Kras' face brightened and he cocked his head. "You mean you've actually got it out?" He smiled. "What is it?"  
"It's... well..." Grimm thought about it. "Perhaps you'd better draw your own conclusions."

* * * * *

Orifati was still trying to get it on the anti-gravity trolley when they found him. Using brute force and not very much agility, he was trying to heave the thing onto the trolley's flat-front.  
It would probably have helped if he wasn't decked out in a radiation suit, which was radiating the heat and glowing like a sun from the golden rays that hit it.  
Kras stopped dead in the what had been the doorway to the hold. "Consign me to the hells," he said gently. Grimm stepped up next to him and nodded. "It's something, isn't it?" He looked down at Kras' face.

The gem that Orifati was attempting to man-handle glittered and shone. It was a sphere, huge in diameter and still half propped in its ring podium. Sitting around it was a row of shelves and evidence lockers, probably filled with expensive equipment, but still the men's eyes were drawn back to the gem. The warmth and light exuded from it lit the room in brilliance. Orifati finally managed to roll it onto the anti-gravity trolley, which bobbed for a second before adjusting to the weight atop it.  
Grimm expected the boy's face to be filled with the same wonder he and the thief had when they'd first stumbled upon it.  
And that expression was there, somewhere, but there was a brief flicker of something else, something cold, and then Kras looked up and grinned. "I haven't seen anything akin to it," he said sincerely. "It's amazing."

"Now," he said, "we'd better get it out of here!" He pointed at Orifati. "Well done on getting that suit. Good thinking!"  
Through the heavy radiation suit's fabric there was a muffled reply.(8)  
The gem floated on its bed toward the hole in the wall and out into the corridor, followed by its protectorate.

* * * * *

**CHAPTER 4:-  
WHY DID YOU DO IT?**

Tenchi surveyed his bedroom. It remained the same from when he had last been here, everything as it had been. Apart from the bed. He had materialised above that a while earlier, Ryoko clenching him and Ayeka to herself, and he could remember the look on the face as she had done so.  
He shivered uncomfortably.  
The three of them had landed in a heap on the covers, entwined in each others arms and after a brief but vigorous struggle he had managed to scramble free before anything else could happen.

Lying on the floor, he had grabbed the pillow that had followed him down and placed it strategically. The girls had watched him from the bed, Ayeka half covering herself with the bedclothes. And they had both been laughing.

Giggling like schoolgirls. Naked. On his bed.

"Out!" he could remember himself saying, and they had left. After he'd said it a few more times.

Head still pounding, he took a deep breath, then let it out slowly. _I am fine_, he told himself, _I am okay_, which was true he suspected. First thing to do was to get dressed, he knew, because that was the thing that people did when they were naked. He took some clothes out of his wardrobe, the first thing that came to hand. T-shirt and jogging bottoms. He found a pair of clean-looking socks in the chest of drawers next to his bed. When he was done he sat down on the bed and rubbed at his eyes gently. _What day was it? The day after his birthday?  
_ He looked over at the chest of drawers and the calendar on top of it.  
All bar Saturday 31st of July and was crossed off in red pen.

He blinked. The date continued to sit there, unmoving. His birthday was April 24th. It was therefore _NOT_ his birthday yesterday. Casually he got up and checked that the calendar was correct.  
"Oh God."  
He felt like some great pit had opened in his stomach and he heard his breathing and heartbeat begin to pick up pace. He had slept with Ayeka and Ryoko, both of them together, while drunk.  
No. He had been seduced by Ayeka and Ryoko, both of them together, while drunk. _You can't trust anyone these days, can you?_ said the calm little piece of his personality. The rest of him didn't bother replying, as it was trying to keep him from hyperventilating. Then the sudden revelation hit him, with all the force of a hammer blow:

He hadn't slept with Ayeka and Ryoko.  
"No," he said carefully, "they slept with me."

How could they do that to him? He was their friend, wasn't he? Had he tried to do anything like that to them?  
Well, obviously not because they probably would have enjoyed it, but the facts were still the same: His trust had been abused. A wave of nausea passed over him again, but he wasn't too sure if it was the hang-over or ...  
_Which one was first?  
_Tenchi shook his head, tried to clear that out of his head. They were friends not lovers, and he couldn't believe that either one would have done something like what they did. Especially Ayeka. Ryoko maybe, but even with all her flouting, could she...  
It was fairly obvious that she could. Both of them.

_BLEEP this_, he told himself, _this never happened._ All he had to do was ignore it. Pretend it never happened and he could forgive them.  
Easy.

He realised that the bed was still messy and so tidied it up. The cover went back on and he rubbed the creases out, letting the duvet sink down to its normal smoothness. Pillows went back in their places. When he was finished he stared at his handiwork.  
The bed stared back mockingly.  
Tenchi stepped atop it, right foot first. Then began to jump up and down on it, quite hard.

When he was finished and the bed was reduced to a semi-covered mess, he began to slow down. He kicked the remaining pillow, where it flumped into the wall and collapsed onto the floor in a soft lump.  
He decided that he probably needed help. If not just for the bed.

* * * * *

It wasn't that sex was alien to Tenchi, more that it was well and truly out there. It floated somewhere in the vacuum between Alpha Centauri and the third moon of Betelgeuse Prime and more likely than not was circumventing the galaxy while doing so, seeing as how completely unrelated it felt it was to Tenchi's life.

The two of them were mutually exclusive. One was the irresistible force, the other was the immovable object and neither could exist in the same universe.(9) Decisiveness wasn't the issue here, because when it came down to it Tenchi was pretty head-strong. Once he'd set his sights on something, there was very little to sway it.  
And this also boiled down to the art of romance, which he had decided on some time ago. What the girls had found, albeit unknowingly, was that they had all the chance of diverting him from his decision as a man armed with two spoons and a loud hooter has in swaying a tank from its course.  
That's not to say he wasn't interested, however, because he was. Most certainly. There were just some things that came before that.

He managed to escape from the bedroom with the minimum of hassle, neither Ryoko or Ayeka were waiting outside his door. In fact, much of the house appeared to be empty and his wandering mind came to the certainty that it must be a Sunday. Tthe Saturday on his calendar hadn't been crossed off, as he'd gone out that night hadn't returned to fix it. As quietly as possible he sneaked down the stairs, footfalls padded by the socks he had put on. Halfway down he could hear the sounds of activity in the kitchen and the faint smell of breakfast. His stomach rumbled with a noise that sounded to him like a nuclear explosion.  
He couldn't face the idea of seeing any of the girls and so continued down the stairs and into the hall. He found one set of his shoes under the telephone table (although he had no recollection of leaving a pair there) and put them on before slipping out the front door and out of the claustrophobia.

The walk he took was refreshing, to both mind and body. The woods gave a mix of shade and cover, with the feeling of openness that he needed so much at this moment. Coolness tensed his skin, but the sunlight that flickered through the leaf canopy gave him a subtle form of warmth. It rather suited his two states of mind on the matter.  
He knew that he needed help and he wasn't sure he could take seeing either Ryoko or Ayeka without it. There was something truly terrifying in having to see them, something which he had never felt before. Stopping to sit off the path and under the bough of a tree, he thought about that. Whenever he tried to conjure them up in his mind now, he simply couldn't see them. He was sure that he used to be able to.  
Now he got... images.   
Flashes of pictures, or memories, or fantasies...  
He couldn't tell anymore.

He'd had them before of course. Normal schoolboy imaginings, which he knew were perfectly normal for who he was. _Who wouldn't in his situation?_ he could tell himself.   
But now they felt so hollow.

Yes, he needed help. He felt he was sensible enough to admit that, but the question was who from? Washu was one answer, but even as it came into his mind he ignored it. She wouldn't understand what he was talking about, and even if she did, she would probably give him some form of advice that would hinder rather than help. His father was out of town on business... or at least, Tenchi thought he was. The way things were going he wouldn't be surprised if that was totally wrong as well. He couldn't talk to him either.  
He could just imagine his father's back-slapping and 'boy to man' speech. He'd probably phone up the department store and ask if they kept their in-store surveillance CCTV footage on video and whether he could order a copy.  
Mihoshi? She'd have her heart in the right place, but he couldn't be too sure that she'd understand what the problem was.

Which simply left one last person. The one person he could rely on in situations like this: Mr. Iwajima, his school tutor.

There was no problem that could not be alleviated by Mr. Iwajima, no situation that could not be defused. Mr. Iwajima had been there when Tenchi had failed his exams after the girls arrival and helped him through it. Mr. Iwajima had helped him learn English to a suitable degree to keep the coveted prize of going to America with the rest of his year during the summer. Mr. Iwajima; counsellor, friend and teacher to all his pupils.  
In fact, there was one simple problem.  
How was he going to explain to Mr. Iwajima that the problem lay in the fact that he had had sex with his friends who were, not only ravishingly beautiful and something even a celibate wouldn't sniff at, but also aliens and not of the Gaijin variety at that.

Which left one final, _final_, person upon which to place the burden of aided responsibility. Tenchi got up and continued down the path, the coolness beginning to feel decidedly chilly.

* * * * *

"Tenchi."  
Tenchi stood just in from the shrine office's doorway, head bowed slightly. He knew that his grandfather was watching him in silence. "Would you like to sit down?" asked the unseen face.  
Nodding. Tenchi licked his lips and head and eyes still pointed earthwards, he moved up to the table to sit down opposite Katsuhito. He crossed his hands in his lap and allowed himself to look up at his grandfather.  
"You're awake early," said Katsuhito. He smoothed out the sheet of paper he was writing on with a hand that was only slightly less creased. "Especially after last night."  
Tenchi's eyes snapped open. "Last night?" he squeaked. _How did he know?_

Katsuhito's eyes looked up at him. "The party," the old man said and looked at the surprise that was drawing across his grandson's face. "You don't remember it?"  
Tenchi managed to shake his head and Katsuhito leant forward slightly, studying his face. Tenchi realised that his features must look as bad as he felt.  
"A nasty hangover," said Katsuhito finally. His eyes creased at the corners. "I'm not surprised with the noise you were all making."  
"Loud?" asked Tenchi in a voice that he hoped sounded normal.  
"You _don't_ remember." Katsuhito stood up, still staring at him and asked, "Would you like some tea?"  
Even before Tenchi's mouth could form the first syllable of 'yes', the other man was over at the kettle and filling it with water. The pair waited in silence until he brought the finished pot of tea and a pair of cups over. He poured two drinks, placed the first in front of Tenchi, the second before himself and the pot on the table to the side. Katsuhito would have suggested they talk on the more comfortable mat which lay further down in the shrine, but he knew that his grandson much preferred the more Western feeling of sitting and talking at a table.  
He waited for the first move to be made.

"Thank you," said Tenchi, "for the tea."  
"It was very loud," Katsuhito replied, "I could hear it up here. Your choice of music was very..." he left it hanging.  
Tenchi waited with his hands around the cup. "Interesting?" he hazarded.  
No answer.  
"Erm... Grandpa, the party... what was it for?"  
"The completion of your exams."  
Tenchi allowed himself the comfort of that small pleasure. "I was... celebrating?"  
"Very good grades," replied Katsuhito bluntly. He looked solemnly at Tenchi's tea, and Tenchi took a quick sip.

A silence descended upon the room. Whatever it was that was bothering him, Katsuhito decided, wasn't going to be brought up first.  
He looked at Tenchi's puffy, red eyes and the sweat that was clinging to his skin. If the boy had any idea what he looked and sounded like, he wouldn't be trying to hide it. But short of giving him a mirror, there was little else to be done.  
"Is something bothering you, Tenchi?" he asked finally.  
Tenchi let go of his cup and stared at it. "Um," he said.  
"Tenchi..." He tried the stern voice.  
"I..." the boy started and then paused. "S-s-something happened that shouldn't have."  
It had been a long time since Tenchi had stammered, and Katsuhito got the impression that he hadn't realised he had even done so.  
"Really."  
"I thought of coming to you for advice on it. It's just that I don't know whether you'd be..." Tenchi's brow furrowed as if searching for a word.  
"Annoyed?"  
Tenchi looked up, brow still creased. "Yes." He shook his head, "No." Then, "Maybe."

From outside there was the sound of footsteps and the shuffling of feet as a visitors passed into the shrine's interior. Tenchi waited until the noise disappeared before allowing himself to speak. "I don't want you thinking any less of me, Grandpa. It's just that I did something that I didn't want to do... really."  
"We all do things we don't want to do Tenchi," said the older man. He took off his spectacles and cleaned them with a tissue he found beside a pair of haiku books on the table. "It's simply a case of coming to terms with them." He put the glasses back on and saw that the boy was still despondently staring at the table's veneer finish.

He said, "You can never have help if you don't ask for it." A slight flicker in Tenchi's eyes signalled that he had touched a nerve there. "I have served as a priest for more years than you have been alive and I have heard many stories, many things that people didn't want to do and none have them have amused or angered me, no matter what they were." He looked at his grandson imploringly.

Tenchi looked up and stared into Katsuhito's eyes. "I made love." It was said with cold, almost mechanical precision. The boy took another sip of his tea and let it rest on the table.  
"I see." Katshito nodded. To keep his hands from shaking he held his own cup tighter. "Well, the transition from boyhood to man-"  
Tenchi gave him a funny look. "Please Grandpa. I... don't want philosophy. I want help."  
The eldest of the men nodded. "Of course."  
Tenchi smiled sadly. "Should I talk about it?"  
"If it helps."  
"It was with Ryoko," he said blandly and Katsuhito sighed inwardly. He couldn't say he hadn't seen it coming... but so fast? But there was nothing to say that it shouldn't happen that way. Poor Ayeka would be heartbroken how-  
"And with Ayeka," finished Tenchi.

There was a very long pause.

Katsuhito's centuries of highly trained skills and patience, honed to the epitome of perfection kicked in that moment keeping him from saying something foolish or regretful. Then common-sense kicked in the highly trained skills and patience and hijacked the brain in a frenzy of synaptic gunfire. "What?" he asked carefully, just to make sure that what was being said wasn't attributed to one of the younger shrine visitors putting something herbal in his tea box.  
"Ayeka and Ryoko," replied Tenchi.  
"Last night?"  
"Yes."  
"During the party?"  
"I... don't know."  
Katsuhito pushed the glasses back up his nose. "Perhaps it would be best if you told them both that you have... slept... with the opposite party."  
"Uh," replied Tenchi gingerly, "I think they might have worked that out."  
Katsuhito pushed the rapidly re-sliding glasses back up his nose. Sighed. "It was all together, wasn't it?"  
"Er... yes. But I didn't mean for any of it to happen," said Tenchi. His head bobbed between looking at Katsuhito and the tabletop. "I don't remember much of it. They must have done it while I was off-guard."  
Katsuhito frowned lightly at that. "What gives you the impression that it was them?"  
"Because I wouldn't have."

In the silence that followed, Katsuhito contemplated the problem. It actually didn't seem much of a problem to him. All of them were involved, so there were no worries of wailing depression for the 'loser' (if you could call the entire thing a game).  
"What is the problem with this arrangement?" he asked finally.  
"Arrangement?"  
"The fact that you are all involved in the actions of what happened and are fine with it-"  
"But I'm not!" said Tenchi, "That's the whole point, Grandpa, I'm not all right with it." He gave a long, loud exhale. "I... didn't want to. Maybe at some point. Maybe. Maybe not. But they went and did it beforehand. I didn't want to, and I don't want to now.  
"They're going to think that this has changed everything, but I don't feel as though it has. I still love them, but I don't... _love_ them. Just as friends."

"You think they will forget it so easily?"  
"No. But they're going to have to."  
"Are you sure that would be the best idea, Tenchi? Perhaps the better option would be to talk to them about-"  
Tenchi rose so fast his knees popped. "Talk to them!" he cried, "they're going to think I want to marry them!" He caught the disapproving look on his grandfather's face, but stood his ground, his face growing red in embarrassment and anger.  
"It's better to face your responsibilities than run away from them," said Katsuhito gently. "Otherwise they have a habit of getting far larger and far more dangerous in the meantime." He looked up at his grandson. "If you feel the need to take the day off training and chores in order to correct the situation, I am sure you are grown up enough to ask?"  
"Thank you, Grandpa," said Tenchi. He bowed and made for the door, "But I saw a lot of leaves on the steps on the way in."

Katsuhito knelt in his spot long after the sound of Tenchi's feet had gone.

* * * * *

BLUE ONYX and RED SAPPHIRE drifted slightly through the cosmos. If you could image a large crab with chicken-pox, you'd be halfway toward what the BLUE ONYX looked like. It was not blue, but green. The RED SAPPHIRE looked a mile-long, three mile wide strip of celery with a lump on one end. It _was _red.  
The pair stopped just outside the Refiu Asteroid Belt, boosters flaring.

"GREEN EMERALD, do you read, over?" could be heard if you had a police-band radio.  
There was no reply.  
"GREEN EMERALD, please respond, over."

Once again there was silence.

The two ships moved forward, crawling through a gap between a bundle of asteroids. A few minutes after they had disappeared a third ship appeared, coming the other way.

* * * * *

Masson sat in his seat, hands under his over-large buttocks. His uniform clung to his body in sodden patches. He could hear no sound from the hostage-taker, but he was sure he was there. He had to be... because no one would simply leave them sitting here like this. In front of him, a step down from his podium, the rest of the bridge crew waited in abject silent terror.  
Masson was not terrified of the threat of being killed; he was practically relishing that. What he was terrified about was actually being allowed to survive. He'd be busted down to constable within an hour! He'd be handing out tickets in Bumsville, Aldroida!

Then suddenly came the voice from the communications panel, crackly from the rock around them soaking up the signal: "GREEN E...ERALD ... in... over."  
He tensed, expecting the hijacker to scream something about turning it off. But it didn't come, just a repeat of the half static broadcast and then a descent back into quiet.  
"Um..." he called out, "should we answer that? They'll get suspicious if we don't." He waited for an answer that didn't appear to come. "Hello?"

Carefully he turned in his chair, ready to dive off it at the first sign of danger.

The back of the bridge was completely devoid of anything that could mean danger. The turbolift doors had been propped open with a book, apparently on science, so that it didn't make a noise when the perpetrator left. Masson took a very deep breath.  
"BLEEPING BLEEP-faced little BLEEPS!" he trumpeted and then rose, stumbling forward toward the turbolift and electronic systems. He heard the squeaks of the other crewmen's chairs turning to face him, but he was too busy searching behind the consoles to care. The dirty little BLEEPARD couldn't have had the nerve to walk right out again. Which simply left the logical conclusion that he was hiding somewhere on the bridge...  
Which he wasn't.

He turned back to the rest of the bridge. "We've been screwed."  
The rest of the crew looked at each other and then took a sudden interest in their bootlaces, the ceiling and their consoles. "Hot dang," said the helmswoman finally, or at least a close approximation of it.  
"GREEN EMERALD, you are now in our sight, please respond, over."

Mr. Luchu, the communications officer, made a move to press the button but Masson jumped down and grabbed his arm. "No!" he snapped, "What are we meant to tell them? That we got hijacked by a bunch of pirates?"  
"I don't know," replied the man, "you're the captain!"  
Masson thought about it. "Yes, I am," he said finally. "So, here's what we're going to do..."

_TO BE CONTINUED..._

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(1) Since their inception, the Galaxy Police has been oft seen as a politically-controlled, dysfunctional, anal-retentive organisation made up of the most wasteful sacks of skin to have had the misfortune to be born. For the most part, that's pretty correct.

(2) And actually quite happily as well.

(3) Juraian Thanksgiving is moderately similar to American Thanksgiving, but with less turkey and more bark. Over time it has become the second largest public holiday in the Galaxy. However, it is the belief of many historians (or, as upstanding Juraians say, 'morally loose historians') that the original Thanksgivings celebrations were more closely related to Earth's pre-Christian Pagan ceremonies, such as May Day. The similarities are more than superficial, as both 'religions' worshipped tree-based deities and shared a common genetic background, which would most likely have created a sort of twisted parallel between the two. These early Juraian ceremonies were, like their counterparts, punctuated with druids, long robes, women without much clothes on and frequent sex, usually with a bit of human sacrifice thrown in if it had been a particularly bad year. This has of course disappeared from the modern Thanksgiving celebrations (although many Juraians secretly wish it hadn't).  
No longer do virginal(4) young Juraians get sacrificed to the Tsunami (mainly because half the planet's population would suddenly disappear), rather sacrifices of money are made to the gods of consumerism. Not that anyone's really complaining that much. The central part to the holiday is the Great Feast, in which worship is paid to the Deity of Tsunami for her Bountiful Gift Of Fruits And Eternal Patronage. The eating of huge amounts of food was, originally, a disastrous incident as the nubile, sexy and mostly virginal Juraians often get rather bloated after porking out on the bountiful yields of home-hearth cooking or, in richer families, servant-prepared banquets.  
Nowadays such problems are solved by the fact that the holiday only occurs every twenty-three years, letting Juraians stay nubile, sexy and as virginal as they like. Bless 'em.

(4) I apologise. The use of the word 'virginal' should hardly be hinted at, let alone included in a PG-13 story. I honestly hope no offence has been caused and my pre-readers recommend that if you are offended, you should pretend that it is nothing more than a misspelled word meaning : Like Virgil Tracy off _Thunderbirds_.  
i.e. all odd walks and flailing, puppet-like limbs. Much like Ryoko after she's downed ten dozen bottles of sake, but with noticeably less breasts.(5)

(5) Sorry. It just popped out. And I apologise for saying 'popped out', which is far more vulgar. Sorry again.

(6) Probably not Central Park, though. Or Jurassic Park.

(7) _Flame-B-Gone_ is a trademark of the Bacta-Bantha Co., the same fine purveyors of such goods as "_Dehydrated Water In A Can"_ and "_Excellent-Ninja-Fish-Robot-Trio-Adventures : The Hentai TV Series"_. (OVA coming soon to a DVD near you! Completely uncut and with the original seventeen minute scene that was so gratuitous that the MPAA censors vomited in their own shoes! Special Platinum Limited Edition comes with blow-up Love Hina dolls and nude Excel Saga pictures! Only while stocks last! No legal endorsement by owning companies implied! Legal cases in progress! Buy today, don't delay! Many a mickle makes a muckle! Etc. etc.)

(8) Which was: "No, it's a radiation suit."

(9) Feasibly exist, that is. When the Lindictus Conglomerate's Research & Development Department devised a way to do it, the entire thing was put off for the fear that the universe may be destroyed in a force of pure and immovably quick energy. Obviously that would have played havoc with the company's profits, although it would help to eradicate the competition albeit permanently. It was lucky that the Galaxy Academy never worked out how to create such power because scientists haven't got the guile to think about the little people, who would, if it occurred, be very thinly smeared across various trans-dimensional rifts.  
All files on the subject are now closed and locked in the same vault as the Zapruder video, which conclusively proves it was a Juraian who pulled the trigger, and the images that were caught using a night-vision camera, pointed through the King's and Queens' bedroom window at the Palace of Jurai.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

AIC & Pioneer own Tenchi Muyo! Star Wars is owned by Lucasarts. Lock, Stock... is owned by Guy Ritchie (probably). Song names, lyrics etc. are copyright of their owner and is in no way an attack on that person or group. All things not owned by a particular company are the intellectual property of the author (Ministry Agent).

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

**Special Thanks To **_(In Alphabetical Order) _**:**

**_All Readers Out there_**  
_**Bob-R**_  
L**_edzepfan  
Manic Street Preachers_**  
_**Metallica_Wedo**_  
**_Negative-Z_**

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

One of my pre-readers, no names *cough*Ledzepfan*cough*, has reliably informed me that this chapter doesn't suck; it just blows. I agree, though I believe that I should still be allowed to call him a little arse-weasel. There was also a large essay on the basis of originality in fanfiction, but it got lost in an accidental erasure of everything that actually made sense. Thank you for reading.


	3. Get Karter!

**A/N Zeta Omega:-** Any footnotes [written as numbers in brackets (or parenthesis, if you're American), following a word, phrase, sentence etc. etc.] should be read posthaste. Missing such notes may result in complete misunderstanding of the fic or, in severe cases, death.

**Note:- **Ha-ha! I think I've beaten the alignment errors in FF.net! Thanks, FF.net Help People! You've saved my story!

**Dedicated to: **Detective Constable Stephen Oake; Greater Manchester Police.

- - - - - - - - - - - -

* * * * *

**LOCK, STOCK AND THREE SOJA GEMS**

"Not a lot of people know that."

* * * * *

The pavement outside the S-MART convenience store shimmered in the midday sun. The heat given off created a shifting, hallucinogenic facade to the shop's front, like a mirage it swam in the haze. Across the length of the street only the litter and a few early autumn leaves stirred. A soft drink can in the gutter clattered noisily between the drain covers. It finished rolling, and came to rest against the wheel of a hotdog stand, which straddled the pavement and the road. The vending's parasol twirled on its bearings, scraping noisily in the wind.  
A few yards away a hotdog, still wrapped in its bun and napkin, lay under the awning of the S-MART's entrance. Sauce the colour of blood was smeared around it; crude splatters left on the asphalt.

Behind the shop window's pane, half indistinct through the tinted mirror like quality it had, the figure stared out. Even though he looked like he was standing a hundred miles underwater, the gun was still plainly visible in his hands. The crowd of officers kneeling behind their vehicles saw it and tensed, their fingers tightening ever so slightly on their pistols' trigger guards. Already one of their members was being carted away on the back of an ambulance, breathing apparatus and all. The smear of hot red that was splashed across the automatic doors was hardly tomato sauce.  
From inside there was the sound of shouting. Crying, also.

What idiot would try to hold up a convenience store in the "Planets Of The Universe" section of the Darixland Theme Park was a question on the lips of those police and civilians who were outside. Behind the police cars the artist's interpretation of a Generic American City on Earth (one of those interesting little Juraian satellites that people heard of in the news every so often) bled into the lush and cultivated fields of Jurai. A pair of theme park attendants dressed as Generic American Gas Station Attendants were being interviewed by two uniformed policemen. They stayed hidden and protected behind the trunk of a thick limbed Holy Tree, which was actually made of a cheap yet durable plastic.

The Theme Park's manager, a balding man with dead-rat toupee and business suit, sweated nervously behind the armour-plated sides of a local constabulary vehicle. "I don't understand it," he said to the sergeant beside him. "We always check for weapons before they come in."  
The sergeant shrugged and peeked over the bonnet. From the darkness inside the novelty shop (of which it was; selling hats and pens and the token paraphernalia of a family outing) one of the men stepped out. His blaster was pressed beneath the chin of his female hostage, who he held roughly about the throat. The woman kept still, eyes wide in fear.  
"We want to talk to an inspector!" screamed the man, "a BLEEPIN' sharp one, goddamn it! You pig-BLEEPERS understand?"  
"We understand!" called back the sergeant, hands cupped to his mouth, "just please don't hurt anyone!"  
"I'll BLEEPIN' kill her!" the man raved suddenly. He pushed the blaster further, so the flesh dimpled and the sights dug into her skin. "We want a BLEEPIN' inspector who knows his stuff, don't you get it! We want one NOW! And if we don't get one we're gonna kill every BLEEPIN' one of these BLEEPS!"

There was a torrent of shrieked abuse from inside the shop and the man in the doorway half turned to look back in. He turned back. "If you don't give us someone to talk to, we'll kill 'em all! GOT IT?" He sidled back in, dragging the woman with him. There was a long and tender wait, and finally the sergeant crab-crawled across to the vehicle next to his. This car's officers were kneeling in its passenger door, one of them aiming through the open driver's window, the other toying with the radio. He looked up as his superior approached.  
"Anybody available?" asked the sergeant. He took off his peaked cap and wiped the badge clear of dirt.  
The constable nodded vaguely. "Yes, Sarge. Sort of. Everybody at the Leistrausse station is out on cases, but there's that GP liaison officer. He's _en route_ right now."  
The sergeant ignored his cap polishing duties for the moment. "Galaxy Police?" He grimaced. "More talk, less action if that's the case. Never trust a 'fez-hat' to start anything that might lose him a promotion, kid." He used the derogatory term for the GP officer, a reference to the fez-like hats that were still worn when space-borne. The constable nodded, filing that to some dark part of his memory, and got back to the radio.

The sergeant looked over towards the end of Main Street Galaxy, the subdivisions of the universe seeming strangely hollow with the tourists being kept behind yellow tape and police officers. Small children were held around their parents shoulders, still eating their ice-cream, watching the spectacle in silence. Here was Nodnol, with its charming cobbled area and mocked-up parliamentary building. There was a fake Kunhauser, with its spherical building structure and harsh shrubbery. A surreal tableau. In the distance he could see the park's main gate and the glittering dot that was a moving vehicle. Leistrausse station was only a two-minute drive from the park so it could either be the armed response team or the GP inspector. The sergeant easily knew which one he preferred.

"Where's that BLEEPING inspector!" screamed a voice from inside the shop. There were the sounds of novelties being scattered and the crying became a soft whimpering. The sergeant turned around to answer and as he did so heard the car pull up behind him. Its repulsor system brought it down to a grumbling stop, and its door opened.

Harri Scagnettee got out with a sigh. He turned the collar of his raincoat up and, with a silent look at the surroundings, stalked towards the car that the sergeant was hiding behind. When he reached it he waited, standing tall above the vehicles silhouette, his body a perfect target for anyone who felt like taking a potshot.   
"Hi," he said with feeling. The chewing gum in his mouth showed when he spoke.  
"Who the hell are you?" asked the sergeant, staring at the man towering above him.  
"Detective Inspector Scagnettee," continued the standing man. He surveyed the shop front. "They shoot anyone?"  
"Yeah. One of our boys."  
"Hostages?"  
"We don't know how many. At least two." The sergeant looked at the rhythmically chewing face above him. "Who did you say you were again?"  
Scagnettee didn't bother to dignify the question with an answer. "Hold this for me," he said and undid his coat. He removed the gun from the holster across his chest and handed it to the other man. It was a massive thing, and the sergeant's hands dropped slightly under its weight. Then Scagnettee was off, weaving between the cars and the men who aimed over them.  
"Where the hells do you think you're going?" roared the sergeant, but all he could see was the rapidly retreating back of the detective and the enveloping darkness of the Generic American Shop.

The automatic doors were stuck in the open position, the blood already beginning to coagulate on its metal and glass. Scagnettee stepped over the worst of it, hands raised above his head and stopped outside the door. "Come in to my parlour," laughed a voice inside. Scagnettee did as he was told.   
It took a few seconds for his eyes to adjust to the twilight inside as someone had turned the interior lights off and the stands full of plush toys and novelties cast dark and surreal shadows. "Don't move," the same voice from earlier hissed in his ear and he felt a gun press into the side of his ribs. "Pat him down," said the voice, "make sure he's not packing."   
A wild-haired man stepped from behind a postcard rack, a hunting rifle in his hands. He propped the gun against a stack of fudge boxes ("DARIXLAND FUDGE! Where Happiness Happens") and ran his hands along Scagnettee's torso and back, legs and arms and waist.  
"He's not got nothing," said the man finally and retrieved his rifle. The gun in the ribs prodded a little harder and Scagnettee waited.  
"You an inspector?" asked the voice in his ear.   
"Yes."  
"Check his I.D."  
The wild-eyed man stepped forward and felt around Scagnettee's pocket for the policeman's wallet. He tore it free, loose change scattering across the tiled floor. He held it out for the unseen accomplice to view.  
"Scagnettee, huh? I heard about you."  
"At least I've been heard about by someone," replied Scagnettee and the voice giggled slightly.  
" I want a car," it snapped a moment later, all amusement gone. "A fast one, gettit? It's gotta be good for-" and it continued, but Scagnettee was only half listening.

There was a third perp behind the shop counter. He had a knife and was shoving wads of money from the till down his trousers. A fourth man was guarding the hostages... two... no, three. Two men and a woman. He squinted, and now he realised there were more; perhaps four or five altogether. They were shielded behind a rack of t-shirts and trousers and slave-labour made clothes with Darix logos.  
"You get all that?" hissed the voice.  
"Completely."  
"Then go out and get us a car!"  
Scagnettee felt himself being manhandled towards the door, and the unceremonious booting out. Stumbling, he slipped on the stain by the door, but managed to right himself. Without looking back he marched back towards the line of police cars, the boos and laughs following.

"What do they want?" asked the sergeant when the DI got back.  
"The usual," replied Scagnettee. "Car. Immunity from their crimes. Text-book stuff." He took the chewing gum out of his mouth and stuck it to the side of the police car. The sergeant looked pained. Scagnettee ignored it. "My gun please."  
The sergeant handed it back gingerly. When it was out of his hands he looked far happier. "Well, Inspector," he smiled, "you've done your part. Now let's wait for the SWAT team and the negotiator. They're on their way from District HQ." He turned to look at the park's manager. "Once they arrive, we can sort all this out." He turned back to a large Harri Scagnettee shaped hole in the scenery and the sounds of the repulsor-lift car starting up behind him.

The hover-car that Scagnettee had arrived in was a Rinio Escort, housing a 550cc gas-driven pump and turbine system which allowed it to reach speeds of up to 250mph. After a short run as a marked police car, Head Office had decided to turn it over to plainclothes because the wiring was too finicky to get the sirens to turn off. In its distinguished history as a police vehicle it had been involved in eighteen chases, carried a total of seventeen kilos of high-class drugs and had been used as an impromptu ambulance. It had, however, never been used as a battering ram before.   
It crashed through the shop window, pulling off a hand-brake turn that left its driver's door facing inwards toward the shop. Racks of sweets and shards of glass imploded, scattering across the floor and pelting the people inside and before the dust had even begun to rise Scagnettee was out of the door, striding towards the surprised collection of gagging, choking, but still armed and dangerous suspects.  
From outside, the sergeant saw the rolling wave of ash and dirt and then the roar and brilliant flash of a sporting rifle going off. There was a heavy twang and one of the police cars nearest the shop suddenly developed a very terminal fault in its engine.  
There was a boom, like thunder.  
Then another.  
Then a quieter crack of gunfire.  
BOOM! followed by a screaming ululation of pain which rose above the other shrieks that were coming from inside.  
There were two more booms and out from the fug flew a man. He hit the floor, his knife clattering from limp fingers.

The crowds behind the police cordon watched in silence. Even the officers manning it turned around to survey the scene. Then from the dust ran a man. He scrambled over the detritus of the crash and slipped on the slimy mess of red by the door. He fell, half pirouetting to land on his backside. One of his trouser legs was torn. Beneath it shone a sticky mass of flesh-hue, white and crimson.  
The man grunted in pain, and the gun in his hand hit the ground next to him. He reached for it, even as the shape reached out of the smoke for him.

It moved forward, that heavy black shadow and In its hand was a heavy black gun. The knocked-down man stopped reaching for his own dropped pistol, which was now only inches away from his outstretched hand.   
Harri Scagnetee stood like some avenging angel in his dust-ridden raincoat. His hair was alive with grit and as the sun peeked out from behind the clouds, it burned through the smoke around him and left a grey and glowing halo about his head. There was a hushed silence from the watchers.   
Scagnettee saw the perp looking at the massive barrelled pistol in his hands and he smiled knowingly, as if he had seen it a hundred times before. "I know what you're thinking punk," he said. "You're thinking; 'Did he fire six shots or only five'? Well, to tell you the truth, I've forgotten myself in all this excitement. But being this is a Magnin Blaster, the most powerful handgun in the galaxy and would blow your head clean off... You gotta ask yourself a question, 'Do I feel lucky'?  
His teeth glittered.  
"Well, do ya? Punk?" He spat the word like a curse.

"Yeah," said the punk, "I do."  
He reached for the gun.  
So Scagnettee kicked him in the head.

When he was finished, the sergeant walked up to him and stood, hands on hips, looking at the destroyed shop. He turned to Scagnettee. "I remember you now," he said, "Scagnettee, right?"  
"At least I've been heard about by someone," Scagnettee replied. He reloaded his Magnin and returned it to its holster.  
"Yeah." The sergeant reached up to his breast pocket and undid the brass popper on it. From it he pulled a little paperback book which he cradled in his hands like a baby. The cover was faded and the pages were dog-eared but still the title and author were visible: _Scagnettee On Scagnettee, A Look At The Thief-Taker's Mind From The Man Who Knows It Best_ by Harri Scagnettee.  
"You wouldn't mind signing this would you?" the sergeant asked. Then, as if realising where he was, he leant forward, looking around conspiratorially. "It's for my brother, you see..."

In the distance, above the wailing of the of the park's manager was the equally scything wail of the armed response unit's sirens.

* * * * *

"What the hell were you doing?!"

The Chief Superintendent of the Galaxy Police's Eighteenth Precinct paced his office like some caged animal. It was a cluttered affair, stacks of papers littering those spaces that weren't taken up by filing cabinets and manila folders. The desk was hidden beneath a mountain of white edges.  
"A disaster! A complete disaster!"  
At the academy he had gained the nick-name 'Quick-Step' for his continued pacing and pounding of fist into palm in times of duress. Now he was called 'Slow-Step', although only behind his back.  
"I send you away for six weeks to keep you out of the public eye after that junkie shoot-out and you go and do this!"  
He grabbed a newspaper off the top of a stack of ARV Requisition forms and threw it into the lap of the man sitting in the chair by the door.

Scagnettee, arms crossed, watching his Ch. Sup.(1) in the same way that an arrogant child might, picked up the paper and looked. It was one of the local sector rags, a tabloid sheet with nothing but hacks and top-less models, but still well read by the masses. Emblazed across a good three-quarters of its front page was "CELEBRATED COP IN THEME PARK SHOOT-OUT!" There was a grainy photograph of a man being tended to by paramedics outside the husk of the Generic American City's convenience store. The caption read, "Another one bites the bullet!!!"  
There really were three exclamation marks.

Harri handed it back to the Superintendent silently.  
"Nothing to say?" asked the superior officer. "No? How about this;" he took a pair of horn-rimmed spectacles from a pocket and opened the newspaper. "Detective Inspector Harri Scagnettee, famed police officer and author, struck another blow for justice yesterday with the single-handed arrest of four armed and dangerous robbers. The four suspects, who cannot be named for legal reasons, attempted to hold-up a _faux_ convenience store at the Darixland Theme Park on Yaviin 5..." He skipped a few paragraphs. "'It was so exciting,' related Mr. Tantshaun, 451, father of two, who was watching the scene, 'There was so much shooting. But when I saw the officer kick the man to the ground, I knew that everything would be okay.' DI Scagnettee declined to comment on the situation and was led away from the scene by what appeared to be some kind of armed honour guard. This group accompanied him in the back of a police van which left the scene shortly after the reporter's arrival."  
The Superintendent raised his eyes to the other man and then continued.  
"Of the five hostages, one was admitted to hospital for minor breathing difficulties attributed to dust inhalation. The suspects are under armed guard at a local hospital, all in a serious but stable condition."  
He put the newspaper down, removed the glasses and sighed. "You're a menace, Harri."

"I solved it, didn't I?" Harri said, speaking for the first time since entering the office. "Nobody died."  
"For once! One of those suspects has multiple gunshot wounds to the chest. He had to have a goddess-damned triple heart-bypass just to stop him going under!"  
"I didn't know we put the lives of scum over normal people. Why don't you try explaining that to the cop in intensive care-"  
"Oh, BLEEP the moral high-ground, Inspector. I know it's for your lousy book, so you can stop trying to make me look like the bad guy. Did you know that one of those hostages is suing the Darix Corporation, the Yaviin Police Force and _ us_ for damaging negligence? Did you? NO! YOU DIDN'T! He gets hit with a BLEEPING gobstopper that got thrown at him by you smashing a car into a shop window, both of which are write-offs might I remind you, and he sues for a breathtaking.... Wait for this number, Scagnettee, I'm sure you'll be impressed... SIXTEEN MILLION CREDITS! Wow! Thanks Inspector! Now I have insurance crawling up my ass. Seeing as the Assistant Commissioner's wriggling around up there, 'cause I didn't fire you six months ago, do you think the insurance guy's going to find any room?"  
Harri thought about it.  
"Yes," he said finally.  
"You're BLEEPING hilarious, Harri. BLEEP you too. If I had my way, I'd have you put on unpaid leave for six months. If the Assistant Commissioner had his way he'd put a bullet in your head. I've heard that the Chief Constable of the Yaviin 5 department you stole custody from wants to remove your BLEEP with a pair of blunt scissors and use it as a salt seller.  
"But I can't put you on unpaid leave, because you'd just spent the time writing your goddamned book. And I'd get screwed because you'd be unable to help on some Special Operations crap they've called you up for."

Harri perked up. "Special Operations?"  
"Yeah. I have no idea why they'd want an absolute BLEEP like you, but they do. SO15 apparently." The Ch. Sup. took an envelope from another stack of paper.  
"There isn't an SO15," said Scagnettee.  
"Well, there is now otherwise they wouldn't be sending you stupid letters, would they?"  
The letter was tossed, in the same manner as the newspaper, into Scagnettee's lap. He picked it up and read the writing on the front:

**Detective Inspector Harri Scagnettee,  
Precinct 18,  
IMMEDIATE PRIORITY!  
TOP SECRET!  
ORDER OF SPECIAL OPERATIONS 15**

The postmark was today's, and it had the emblem decreeing that of the first precinct. He opened it and read the letter inside;

_ Detective Inspector,  
Under immediate priority, you have hereby been transferred to Special Operations 15. Report immediately after reading this letter to _(and then scrawled in pen) Docking Bay 5 _at _ 12:00 hours_. All preparations have already been made for your journey. Do not speak about this letter to anyone or attempt to enquire about the operations of SO15.  
Directly,  
Commissioner P'onti BSc_

"So what the BLEEP'S SO15 then?" asked the Superintendent.  
"I'm not authorised to tell you that, Sir. And," Harri checked his watch, "I have a ship to catch in an hour. So I'd better be going."  
"Don't mess about, Harri. What's going on?"  
Harri ignored him and stood to leave. The Superintendent growled. "Hey! What did I just ask you?"  
But Scagnettee was gone.

Outside the office, in the Superintendent's secretary's office, Harri reopened the letter and read it again. Then he laughed. He jumped up and down, pumped his hips in the touch-down shuffle. The pretty, bob-haired woman behind the computer watched the trench-coated man in shock. Harri brought the letter up to his lips and planted a massive kiss across it. Then he noticed the secretary, and as if a puppet with its strings suddenly cut, his face fell. Tall, masculine and stony faced he looked at her.  
"I'm excited," he said.  
Then walked away.

This, however, would not occur for another eighteen hours.

* * * * *

**CHAPTER 5:-  
MAN MACHINE**

Lucius Grimm was not particularly enjoying the nuances that the KOCORREL was throwing at him. Then again, he wasn't particularly enjoying the KOCORREL altogether. He was used to the more delicate of ships, ones that turned on a coin and went like crap off a shovel. Under the subtle shifting of hand movements he could pull off the most delirious maneuvers. Mesmerising pirouettes, blinding barrel-rolls, loop-the-loops to make eyes water...  
This ancient, near-scrap bulk freighter felt in his expert hands, however, like a lump of charcoal.   
That is, for example, if you had bought a piece of charcoal from a shady man who positively guaranteed that said piece of charcoal would fly, and then you took said charcoal home and put it on the floor, then waited for it to take off in aerobatic brilliance, you would likely be feeling the same sort of anxiety that Grimm was.   
After dragging the ship through its wheezing gears and out into what he hoped was a particularly devoid area of space, his pique had finally surfaced and he had wandered the corridors of the ship.

For some reason his feet had led him down, further and further into the very bowels of the craft, until he was standing in the hold; watching the latest 'acquisition' in a list that spanned a good few centuries.   
It worried him.  
The gem didn't seem to notice this, but bobbed gently on the anti-gravity trolley that had carried it in. The beautiful and surreal glow that was cast out from it lit the hold in an alien gold.  
It was strange, thought Grimm, that he would use the word '_alien_'. He had seen enough of the galaxy, a lot more of it than legally allowed, and because of it he no longer uttered the word. It wasn't really used at all anymore anyway, except by those who still whispered 'off-worlder' and 'alien' in barbed and spiteful tones, as if it were some kind of hateful disease.   
But this was thing, this _gem_, was exactly that. It _was_ alien, in the most true and literal sense. Somewhere, deep in the very pit of his soul, he knew that this thing should not exist... not here, not now, not in this universe, not ever.

The force-field that surrounded it though (a necessity on any ship these days what with the threat of hull-breach or other space-borne disaster) hummed gently and every so often gave off a brief forked flicker of static. The threat of radiation had seemed rather high, but it became readily apparent that if this thing was what Arikaan wanted, he might have warned them about third-degree burns before they took-off. At least, they hoped this was what he wanted. And they hoped that he would have warned them.  
Grimm moved closer, the feeling of utter inconsequence to the thing growing with each step, and the force-field seemed to cast shadows on the gem, where shadows would generally not be cast...  
And then he was suddenly feeling the sweat begin to pour down his back... heard the beat of his pulse in his brain, a deep and terrific drone that seemed to block out everything except for the gem in front of him...

"Having a look at our little find?" called out the voice from behind him.  
Grimm span around, hand prepared to go for the blaster in its holster, but not quite doing so as he saw the speaker. Kras was standing in the doorway, still dressed in his frayed uniform and now carrying a rolled up magazine and a cup of something that was wet and steaming lightly.  
The two stood there for a second, and Grimm surely thought that the boy had seen his strange turn, until Kras looked down at his drink.  
"It's coffee," he said, as if trying to explain a wayward problem. "This ship might not have a _cordon bleu_ galley, but it has the best instant coffee I've tasted in years."  
Grimm smiled in the style of his namesake and turned back to the gem.

It didn't appear so awesome now.

"I just came down here for a quick look at it," said Kras, who had walked up beside him. "I'm positive it's the only thing that Arikaan would have wanted us to get." The boy blew the steam from his cup and took a sip. "I mean, if I were Arikaan, I wouldn't want anything else."  
"Where's Orifati?" asked Grimm. He couldn't really be bothered with the boy's prattling after that.  
"In his cabin. He appears to have found out that radiation suits crease his trousers." He smiled briskly and then slipped back into formality. "If you want my opinion, I don't think we can trust him..."  
Grimm caught the conspiracy forming behind the boy's words. "That's funny," he replied, "I don't trust you."  


Kras walked forward to the force-field and knelt down by it, staring through its more than semi-opaqueness and at the object within. It made him appear even smaller than he already was. "Even better, because I told Orifati that I didn't trust you either." He looked around. "Is there anyone you do trust, Mr. Grimm?"  
"Only two people. And you're not one of them."  
"I'm beginning to trust you already." Kras returned to the gem.  
"What is it, do you think?" asked Grimm. Trust and interest were two different things.  
"I'm not too sure," came the reply. The scientist didn't avert his gaze from the gem. "It's a stone, obviously... but I haven't seen any sort like it before." He stood and dusted his trousers with his hands. "I'm rather curious, to be honest."  
"So am I." Grimm gave it a stern look, and decided not to bother speaking out about his own feelings about it. "It's pretty obvious why Arikaan wants it though. It's got to be worth millions."  
"Perhaps."  
Nothing else was forthcoming.  
"I'll get back up to the bridge," said Grimm after a short and uneventful wait, "the Galaxy Police are going to be riled after this."  
He walked off and behind him Kras turned his head and watched the retreating pirate's figure.   
He shook his head in dumb mirth.

Past the view from the door, Grimm steadied himself against the nearest bulkhead and wiped at his forehead. He wasn't sweating anymore, but his face was burning and his throat was as dry as he could ever remember. What had happened in there, he wasn't too sure, but he didn't want to go through a re-run of it...  
He coughed and righted himself, let his feet take the weight. It had to have been the glow... the doctors had always said he was a little epileptic. If he hadn't had that operation, he would probably be biting his tongue off in there right about now.  
Yes. That was it.  
He didn't believe it though.   
You had to be a damn good liar to trick Grimm and unfortunately he wasn't as good as he needed to be.

Anyway that scientist boy with the dictionary-mouth was in there now.  
Better Kras than him, he decided.  
He didn't believe that either.

* * * * *

"Yes," said Acting-Captain Alvero Masson, "Oarymgians.(3) A bunch of them."  
The RED SAPPHIRE's captain (a full blown one, Masson had found out. Pips and all... smug-BLEEPARD) looked at the six crewman lined up in his docking bay. It _was_ _his_ docking bay, because this was his ship.  
This annoyed Masson rather considerably.  
"Oarymgians?" the captain asked. He blinked.

The RED SAPPHIRE had found the stricken EMERALD bobbing about the asteroid field like a cork in a rock pool. It's hull had bowed in places from a change in air-pressure, most likely caused by some kind of internal explosion. For a brief moment, as they had stared upon the damaged ship, there was a feeling on the SAPPHIRE that the other ship's crew was dead.  
Then the single static-ridden remark over the radio; "Mayday."

"Oarymgians," said Masson again, and looked at his crew, who nodded. "There must have been at least ten or twelve of them... they tricked us into the asteroids and hijacked us."  
The captain's face turned a subdued shade of white. "My Goddess," he said. "And they didn't kill you?"  
"Well, two of my men were injured."  
"They're in the sick-bay right now," said the captain. "I'm surprised they've still got all their limbs intact if it was Oarymgians!"  
Masson nodded and tugged at his uniform in an effort to straighten it. "My crew is highly motivated though. The hijackers were probably worried about reprisals."

The captain turned to one of his crewmen. "Tell the comms-officer to send an immediate hail to the ONYX... tell them to leave the field and send an emergency message to be relayed to GPHQ; the GREEN EMERALD has been hijacked; cargo is gone."  
As the runner set off, Masson looked at the captain. "Cargo? You mean the drugs in the hold?"  
The captain shrugged, "I don't know. I was just told to report if the 'cargo' was gone."  
"Must be drugs then," said Masson. "That's the only reason why Oarymgians would hijack a ship."

* * * * *

Somewhere in the outer regions of space; far beyond the usual through-ways and hubs of the major universal sectors, beyond the farther most spiral arms of the most outer reaching galaxies, beyond even the Great Barrier Reef(2), there was a large clump of nothingness.  
It wasn't a particularly pretty piece of nothingness, nor was it in any way very interesting. This was largely due to the attribution of there being nothing there to be pretty or interesting.

For what could have been an aeon there was silence, then with a noise that sounded like a hundred-thousand people saying 'thwak' at the same time, a temporal anomaly opened and spat out a rather surprised looking corkscrew and bottle of French champagne.  
The champagne floated there for awhile, not speaking. It was that surprised. Eventually the corkscrew rotated its eye towards it and the pair hovered in silent contemplation of their present situation.  
"Well," the bottle would have said, if it weren't so surprised, "that's the last time I trust them."  
But of course it couldn't speak, because it was shocked beyond all rational thought.

The only person who noticed this was a quantum surveyor who was some fifteen jillion light years away. As is often the case in such incidents, he ignored it and seeing as he was the only person on watch that day, it was completely missed.  
If you had told the champagne bottle this, its indignation would have been truly wordless.  
It wasn't a deliberate act on the part of the surveyor that resulted in this incident from never being truly catalogued, but because a) he was too busy thinking about the date he was meant to be going on with the really cute t'Dnal, who worked as a system's programmer on the floor above, later that night, and b) he was stupid.

Therefore one of the most important points of the next few weeks; weeks that would be drenched in blood, sweat, toil and tears, was completely lost on the majority of the population. Many would die, sooner or later, without realising the full extent of what majestic and gargantuan skein of fate they had been weaved in.

Some hours later the bottle became supremely annoyed at the unfairness of the universe and, in a blazing temper, blew its top.

The corkscrew watched mutely.

* * * * *

At exactly the same time as three criminals were making a decidedly speedy getaway with a large and glowing gem, and at approximately the same time that Tenchi Masaki began to angrily sweep the leaves from the steps of his grandfather's shrine, and approximately eighteen hours before Harri Scagnettee received his letter, and some minutes after a bottle of champagne suddenly appeared in the depths of space, a rather deflated looking Galaxy Police cruiser was towed by its compatriots out of an asteroid field.  
It was hardly big news, and seeing as there weren't any reporters, it was hardly little news either.  
But, of course, it was big news and as soon as it was realised what had taken place the entire ship was placed in quarantine for forensics and scene of crime officers to pick over DNA samples and evidence.  
The GREEN EMERALD's crew was cross-examined in an effort to find just who exactly would plan and carry out such a nefarious crime.  
"Oarymgians," had said the captain. "Twelve-feet tall Oarymgians. With guns. We had no way of holding them off."  
The other crewmembers agreed wholeheartedly that the ship had been hijacked by twelve-feet tall Oarymgians with guns.

But what the hell would some pokey little acting-captain and his crew know? asked the Galaxy Police top-brass. What if it was something more evil and terrifying than that...  
What if it was twelve-feet tall Oarymgians with guns, who were disciples of (or at least influenced somehow by) Kagato?

"I mean," said one of them, "it's, like, totally true that he would go totally hoopy if he knew we had one of his gems!"  
There was a general agreement, apart from the definition that Kagato would 'go hoopy' because none of the others knew what it actually meant and they also pointed out that the bespectacled Ruin Buster was dead.  
"But," he continued, "what if he had some, like, waaaaay zapgard disciples? How do we know he didn't have any? He wasn't no doop."  
The rest of the brass was forced to agree, to some extent.  
"And they would be totally hoopy if they knew we had his gem."

Desperately, a plan was formulated and, as is the case with most plans made up without aforethought, it wasn't very good. 

* * * * *

The two Galaxy Police officers at the Seventh Precinct's VIP Docking Bay waited with considerably obvious trepidation. Constable Donahue was sitting on one of the sofas that had been provided for those unlucky enough to be given the duty of greeting dignitaries. He was short and youthful and his hair was an inch longer than the regulations officially permitted, but he continued to somehow wrangle a way out of seeing the station's barber. This was his first official police case, and it wasn't what he had been expecting.  
The other man, his chevrons denoting Sergeant, was over by the water-tank getting himself a cupful of water. His name was Nabo and of the pair he was the really clever one. He had a bachelor's degree in physics. He also had a handlebar moustache.  
Nervously, Donahue shifted his cap from one knee to the other and looked about the room for what must have been the hundredth time. Pale peppermint walls with a couple of reproduced prints of famous art and a soft cream carpet on the floor. He picked last month's copy of 'What Ship?' from the coffee table in front of the sofa and flicked through the pages.  
Nabo, transparent plastic cup in hand, walked over to the window that gave a view of the hangar and seeing nothing there, sat down on one of the seats opposite the sofa. "Would you stop doing that?"  
"What?" asked the constable.  
"Not 'What?' It's pardon," replied the sergeant, nursing the drink. He saw the look of complete misunderstanding on his junior's face. "You say 'Pardon?'"  
"You what?"  
Nabo shook his head and raised his eyes. "For Goddess' sake. I told you VIP duty would be boring, but would you listen?"

The constable put the magazine back down and sat in silence while the sergeant drank his water.  
"Who is this guy then, Sarge?" he asked after a while.  
"His name's Karter. Detective Chief Inspector Karter." Nabo said reverently and took another sip of his drink.  
"I think I've heard of him."  
"You probably have." The cup was placed on the floor next to the chair. Where the light shone through, a rainbow crawled the carpet.  
"Where then?"  
"The Jyantai."

Donahue's forehead crumpled in concentration, the eyebrows knitting, lips pursed. Then his eyes opened wide. "You mean the ship? The Jyantai?"  
The sergeant rolled his eyes at the naivety displayed by his charge. "Yes, the ship."  
"What about it? I know it was lost." He paused. "I mean destroyed."  
"It was a carrier," said Nabo suddenly. "A blockader; a ship made to stop pirates from attempting to escape a sector. Had a crew of eight-thousand. Carried two-thousand fighter craft... a massive thing. Completely unique. One day it investigated a distress signal from a cargo-freighter out in an uninhabited sector.  
"The freighter, when it found it, was a wreck. The Soja, however, wasn't. And it was waiting for them."

The constable paled.  
"When it was over, the Jyantai was a shell. Only half the ship was still survivable. I met one of the technicians who helped to pick through it at dry-dock. A real mess, he said."  
Donahue shook his head. "What about the escape pods?"  
"Those that weren't obliterated were empty. They jettisoned too early, you see; they were designed to evacuate themselves at the utmost point of danger. Most of them did, but without people onboard."  
"Then the crew were...?" It was left hanging.  
"Dead," said Nabo. "Most of them from the attack. All the pilots had been launched and been cut down while strafing the Soja... or at least that's what they thought at first. The funny thing was that some of the crew were found sliced apart in the untouched areas of the ship, and most of them were armed. Some of them even got off a few shots."  
"Why?"  
"Well, you see, they found one survivor. He was onboard an escape pod that was a few miles from the battle. Its boosters had kicked in and it had managed to escape unscathed."  
Donahue whistled in admiration. "DCI Karter? He was the survivor?"  
"Constable Karter back then."

Donahue slapped his thigh. "I knew I recognised Karter! The only copper to meet Kagato and live!" He smiled. "Lucky BLEEPARD!"  
"Not particularly," replied Nabo, "there wasn't much of him when they rescued him."  
"Huh?"  
"The Jyanatai came under attack from Kagato _and_ Ryoko. While the Soja attacked the Jyanatai, Ryo-ohki attacked the fighters. Then _she_ boarded."  
"Ryoko?" The mouth hung open again. "But why?"  
"A bit of fun, I guess. Then she went after Karter's escape pod..."  
"And what happened?"  
"He got carved up."  
"How badly?" asked the constable.

The sergeant prepared to answer and at just that moment, the door at to the hangar opened and a quartet of Galaxy Police officers stepped through. Three of them were ship's flight-crew and they moved aside, as if in awe of the man who followed them. Donahue and Nabo came to attention as snappily as a crocodile with a mouth full of cheese crackers.  
"DCI Karter! It's a pleasure to meet you sir!" Nabo said, nearly as snappily the salute.  
Donahue watched the Detective Chief Inspector with interest. He was a muscular man, hardly hidden beneath the well-measured blue uniform, and he certainly looked suitably formidable. Nabo noted that for a man who was over 800 years old, the DCI was particularly spry. His neck was tightly muscled, the shoulders broad and the face could well have been hewn from solid granite. If you looked at him in profile, he wouldn't have seemed out of place on a stamp. Both hands were behind his back in the most imperious fashion, as if he was at a parade ground back at the Academy.  
When he moved over to the two policemen he did not walk. He marched.

"Sergeant." He nodded. "Constable. You don't need to salute, I'm only a Chief Inspector."  
"Yes, sir," replied Nabo. He held out his hand, "But it's a pleasure to meet a man who rose through the ranks like you did."  
The DCI returned the favour by bringing his hand out from behind his back and going to shake his subordinate's hand. Instead, the constable and sergeant shrank back and stared at the extremity.  
"Oh. I'm sorry," said Karter sincerely, looking at the stump where his right hand should have been, "I got it shot off in a drugs bust yesterday. They're growing me a clone one, but you know how it is."  
"No," said Donahue and was rewarded with a look of pure unbridled contempt from his sergeant.  
"Excuse him," said Nabo angrily. He held out the other hand. Karter's left hand came out from behind his back and the two subordinate officers did a double-take for the second time in as many minutes.  
"Ah, now this one isn't getting a clone," said Karter. The metal claw, like that of a crab's, glinted. "This is my reminder," he said. "Shake?"  
With a fixed grin, Nabo took the cold metal appendage and shook it as gentlemanly as could be allowed.

"So," said the DCI finally, "I heard you talking about me. What part did you get up to?"

* * * * *

"There are lots of things a man can lose in those kind situations," said DCI Karter from behind his cup of Java. The three of them; Nabo, Donahue and himself, were sitting in one of the facility's many cafeterias. Surrounding them was a horde of rabid policemen, each of whom hung on Karter's every word.   
"In my case, I lost a number of things;"  
He put the cup down and tapped his hand in time with what he said, "My pancreas, my kidneys, seventeen feet of small intestine, two feet of large intestine, my liver, both my eyeballs, my left arm, both my legs, my genitals, three pints of blood... there was more but they weren't as important at the time."  
A hushed silence befell the listeners. One of the chefs came over and served a slice of cheese-cake to the DCI.  
"How? How did it happen?" asked a transport-policewoman.

"I was onboard the Jyantai," said Karter, "when the Soja attacked. I won't embellish the story... I wasn't doing anything heroic like the rumours say. I was getting a drink at the time. And I didn't play any part in the actual battle, no matter what anybody tells you. I was only there because it was thought it would be better for someone inexperienced like me to get a job on an easy operation.  
"After the first twenty... twenty-five minutes of combat, the captain gave the order to abandon ship. All non-essential personnel first, which included me. Five thousand of us in the first wave. There was a group of us, eighteen or nineteen, heading for F-Deck's escape pods, when she attacked. Just a blur," his face contorted in self-loathing, "and something goes speeding past me... I just kept running. I heard them screaming, but I couldn't help them..."  
A hand patted him on the shoulder, and Karter shrugged it off.  
"So, I got to the pod and it jettisoned itself. It realised that there was no one else alive in the area apart from me, so it left.   
"It felt like hours before I realised I was missing my arm." He raised the claw. "Sliced off when she came past, I guess. Cauterised the wound.  
"I didn't think she'd come after me. She came through the wall. I tried to shoot her, she struck out, and eventually I was lying there with my guts hanging out, staring through one good eye at that BLEEP looking down at me."  
"Ryoko?" asked someone.  
Karter didn't seem to notice though. His voice darkened. "God, she was evil... even though I screamed for her to kill me, she wouldn't. She just kept watching me until Kagato showed up... after a while they both left, and I blacked out.  
"When I came to, I was in hospital. A rescue fleet had been sent after they'd received the Jyantai's distress signal. They'd found me in the escape pod and managed to... rebuild me."  
He scratched at his nose with his claw and sniffed loudly. "No one... no one else made it."

The group waited, the barest of breathing all that could be managed.  
"And that's that," said Karter finally, tiredness creeping into his voice. "That's the tale of DCI Karter."  
He started on his cheesecake, with some difficulty, as the dessert fork proved dangerously unsuited for his mechanical appendage. In the end he pinned down the plate with his stump and scooped the cake onto the cutlery.  
Nabo exhaled sadly. "Why are you here then, Sir?"  
"I don't know," replied the other man, after swallowing his mouthful, "but it involves the Commissioner, so it's got to be important, I suppose." He downed the last piece of cake and looked across at Nabo;  
"Let's go."

* * * * *

Nabo and Donahue led Karter around the maze of twisted corridors and jutting walkways that crisscrossed the station. Eventually they stopped outside the usual blank-faced door and equally blank-faced secretary that isn't often found outside of bureaucratically minded societies or big-money record-companies.  
Karter entered.

The Assistant Commander's Office was a squat box of pastel colour, much like the waiting room outside the VIP Docking Bay. It was tidy, clean and efficient, much like the man who owned it. He sat behind the desk at the back of the room, in all his uniformed status.  
He was short and it was this, heightened somewhat, by the quick agile movements he made, that caused him look like some large, featherless bird. His neck seemed to move in ways that were beyond the normal three-dimensions, like it was made of inter-dimensional elastic bands.  
There was another man, dressed in civilian garb, taking up on of the other seats opposite the desk.  
Karter stood in the doorway and surveyed the room with the height of politeness.

"Ah," said the Assistant Commander, who was sitting behind his desk and trying to sort out the folders on its surface into neat piles, "Detective Chief Inspector, come in. Sit! Sit!" He waved his empty hand at the chair opposite him.  
Karter moved the stack of papers on his seat down to the floor, then sat down.  
"I'm afraid the Commander won't be joining us. He's in a meeting with the Marshall about the situation." The Assistant Commander skimmed through the folder he was holding and, finding it not to his liking, threw it into the wastepaper bin in the corner. "Drink?"  
"Yes please," replied Karter. It didn't take his intuition to work out that his being called here was involved in the unnamed situation. "What situation is this, Sir?" he asked.  
The Assistant Commander fumbled with some more papers before deciding that they weren't that necessary. "Tea? Coffee? Or perhaps something stiffer?" He tapped his nose and looked at the civilian. "We're all friends here," he said, "and what's alcohol amongst friends? Oh yes. The situation. Quite a mess, really."  
Karter felt like he was going in circles. "I'll pass on the drink, thank you, Sir. So... what is this mess?" He smiled in his most information-garnering way.  
"Oh, you know..." started the Assistant Commander, then he opened his desk drawer and peered in. "Are you sure you don't want a Vodka? It's all I've got..." He retrieved a half-empty bottle of Kinhauser Vodka and two shot-glasses from the hide-away, resting them gently on an empty area of the desk. He poured them both out a drink. "... The Emerald problem... quite a mess."  
"And what is the Emerald problem?" goaded Karter gently.  
"Actually, I'm meant to brief you on that," said the superior.  
"Ah," Karter smiled.  
The Assistant Commander shook his head and pointed at the untouched shot-glass. "You'd better drink up," he said rather more soberly. "You're going to need it." He cleared his throat. "The GREEN EMERALD, one of ours obviously, was hijacked this morning; lured into an asteroid field, crew overpowered. Oarymgians apparently. That's why you're here... your expertise on the matter."

"You think it was one of the regulars out of the Organised & Serious Crimes list?" asked Karter. The O&S.C. Department, the one he headed, held the largest number of records on criminals in the known universe. This was all down to him, it could be added, as it was Karter who had put forward the idea that all records should be kept indefinitely on the Galaxy Academy's records rather than being deleted when they were deemed unnecessary.  
He would flatly deny it was his own doing, though. Apparently, he was just going on good advice from his subordinates.

"Not... um... not exactly," replied the Assistant Commander. He took interest in another folder and slid it into his Outbox. "Erm... you're a top man on the force, Detective Chief Inspector. Nine-hundred years service, arrests as long as your..." He looked at Karter for a second, and then at the man's arms. "Lots and lots of arrests," he said finally, "and one of those whose aim it is to arrest Kagato and Ryoko."  
"Until they died," said Karter. "That made it a little bit harder."  
"Yes... Are you sure you don't want that drink?"

When Karter answered, yet again, to the negative, the Assistant Commander continued, "You do, of course, know about the Kagato incident?"  
The DCI nodded. "Why?" he asked slowly. "Is there something about it that relates to this hijacking?"  
"Ah... yes. Well, you see, it's like this;" said the Assistant Commander and he told him.

"Kagato wasn't _exactly_ killed by a GP fleet. It wasn't even a fleet at all, actually. Erm... y'see..." He thought about what to say. "You see, Kagato was killed by someone called Tenchi Masaki."  
"Someone?" asked Karter. "You mean to tell me that the official reports are a lie?"  
The Assistant Commander nodded slowly. "Yes... I'm not privy to all of the facts, but I have been authorised to tell you the situation leading up to Kagato's death. Tenchi Masaki raided the Soja with the help of a number of others, who I haven't been told about, and then subsequently... killed him with a beam-sabre. I'm not entirely sure on some of the information, but this is a Juraian political problem, and it was necessary to keep it hushed up."  
"This man, is he some kind of one man killing-machine?"  
"Well, it's a bit more technical than that. Apparently he's Juraian."  
Karter nodded. "Ah." That explained everything. Juraians. Always those zany Juraians!(4)  
"But he was born on some little outback planet," continued the Assistant Commander, "it's not really that important.

"The thing is, the Soja was destroyed along with Kagato and in the process the source of the ship's energy appears to have... manifested itself in solid. In theory at least."  
"I'm not sure I get you."  
"During a drugs bust a few days ago, a gem was found. We secured it, examined it and found it to be... rather more energetic than your average rock. It seems to be one of the Soja's energy sources. We were transporting it to a more secure facility when its transport, the GREEN EMERALD, was hijacked."  
"But who could have known?" Karter asked, already one idea spawning in his mind.  
"An inside job? That's something for CIB to investigate certainly. Of course, it could just be coincidence. But then, why would someone go to the bother of robbing a cruiser, when there are easier targets?"  
"They _must_ have known."  
"And Oarymgians aren't well known for their 'intellectual capacity'. Which means one thing; the people involved wanted that gem, and the only people who would are those who know what it is. Only twenty people in the entire GP staff know, plus an extra thirty in the Juraian Council. All of them are security checked and read-on or -off when necessary. It's unlikely they'd want it."  
Karter sat silently for a moment. "Kagato."  
"He was no fool. Perhaps he had a back-up plan, maybe he took on some disciples." The Assistant Commander pulled a pained grin. "There's no telling what could happen if it falls into the wrong hands."

DCI Karter sat in the chair, letting his mind take in everything he'd just heard. Incredible as it sounded, with it being so many months after Kagato's death, he could quite easily believe what was being told to him. "And you want me to act as an Investigator on this case... I'd be glad to, Assistant Commander."  
"Er... no," replied the Assistant Commander, "you'll be leading the investigation, Detective Chief Inspector. Someone is needed who will get to the bottom of this without conforming to the general... niceties that are followed by the Galaxy Police. You will have complete authority to ask for equipment and personnel as you deem fit. You can pass on these requests directly to the Marshall. The budget will, of course, be written up when the case has been closed."  
Karter clicked his teeth with his tongue. He nodded slowly.  
"Specialist Operations 15 is, as of this moment, now under your control-"  
"There isn't an SO15," said Karter.  
"There is now..." The Assistant Commander cleared his throat again. "You may use any means at your disposal in order to apprehend the perpetrators of this act and, if necessary-"

The civilian, who Karter had forgotten was even there, leant forward. "Terminate," he said, "with extreme prejudice."  
"... Yes. Paperwork won't be necessary," affirmed the Assistant Commander, "as it's not on any of the books. And as that is the case, you must remember this is completely top-secret and need-to-know information. Is there anything you'd like to requisition now?"  
"I'll do that myself, thank you, sir," replied Karter as calmly as he could. "But I would like to see this ship; the EMERALD. It is here, isn't it?"  
The two other men exchanged looks. "No," said the Assistant Commander. "It's at a dry dock on one of the Altioc colonies... You do, of course, have access to it, DCI Karter. All questions can be sent directly to the Marshall. The full report on the situation is, of course, on the computer networks. I'd recommend you have a look at it..." He cleared his throat in a manner that gave the impression that the conversation was over.  
"Thank you, sir," replied Karter. The two men rose and shook hands, the civilian proving to be totally devoid of interest in the current situation, and Karter left the office.

Somehow he couldn't shrug off that sentence; "_Terminate with extreme prejudice_."   
He couldn't remember a time when he didn't look at his arm and wish he could engage in it, but _they_ were dead and it was simply a distant, yet painful, memory.  
"Terminate," he said slowly, tasting the relish and discomfort slide out with it, "with extreme prejudice."

* * * * *

**CHAPTER 6:-  
**

EVERYBODY'S TRYING TO BE MY BABY

Tenchi slid the front door open and peeked around it as stealthily as he could.  
The hall was empty, the doors leading off from it pulled to. From the living room came the drone of the television.  
Quietly he moved inside, trying to keep his own sounds beneath that of the TV's. He sat down on the hall step and slipped off his shoes, keeping hold of them, so as to not make more noise than necessary, and then crept upstairs.

Why he was sneaking about in his own home, like a thief, he couldn't be too sure, but he could guess. The pangs of pain and anguish and shock that he had felt at the beginning had lessened to a dull throbbing at the back of his head. It was like a headache, but something more:  
It was anger, but on a scale he had never felt before...  
It was helplessness and futility at its most base. At being lured and used...  
It was humility and self-loathing at his own weak-willed, pathetic stupidity...

He reached the top of the stairs and tip-toed down the landing, shoes in hand. His clothes were clinging to his back, sweat caused from his above-average enthusiasm to carry out his chores. And perhaps a little from fear at what he knew he had to do, something that he knew probably wouldn't go down to well with the girls.

"Tenchi."

He froze and then turned around slowly, half his instincts calling for him to run and the other half telling him that he had a job to do.  
Ryoko was standing before him. Not floating, not lunging at him, not groping at him. She was simply standing there, dressed in that pink and green dress that she's worn when he first met her(5). Her face, however, was different. Almost serene in its tranquility, as if she had just woken from a well-rewarded sleep.  
And it was that which scared Tenchi the most.  
She took a step towards him.  
He took a step back.  
"Tenchi," she said again, "it's okay."

He thought about that. The idea that 'it' was 'okay' was somehow rather mutually exclusive to his situation.  
_Take a stand Tenchi... Tell her it wasn't meant to happen...  
_"Ryoko," he started. "What happened last night... that was..." He stopped and struggled for the right way to say it. "Well, when we had s-" He choked on the word and attempted to restart the sentence. That was slightly off-put by Ryoko leaping at his inert form and dragging him to the floor.  
"I know, I know... it was fantastic!" There was a flurry of arms as he tried to push her off and she held him down, straddling him. "It's okay though, I've got it all fixed! We take Ryo-ohki and get out of here before Ayeka tries anything..."  
Tenchi was only half-listening however. His near-strangled cries had been stifled by the sudden freezing of his vocal chords, an act that was most likely attributed to staring up through the gully of Ryoko's not entirely slight cleavage, in order to see her face.  
"I know what you're going to say. I'm not sure I like ditching them all like this either." She pouted prettily for a second. "But it's love Tenchi!" She peered down at him. "Isn't it?"  
"Ahhh," said Tenchi, feeling like he was suffering from a severe case of tunnel-vision.  
"I mean, I know I never really said it straight out, but it is." She shuffled backwards a little, so she could bend forwards, her face now only inches from his. Her features registered confusion for a second as her backside met an obstruction. Then she smiled, fanged incisors glinting in evil lust.  
"Oh, Tenchi, I'm not getting you all hot already, am I?" She let go of one of his arms, letting her other arm pin his torso down, and sat up. The unburdened arm reached behind her and grabbed the offending article that jutted upwards from his body. "Do you like that?"  
"No," grunted Tenchi. His face screwed up and he bit his lip.  
"Really?" She began stroking it lightly through the material of his trousers.  
"No." Tenchi gave a tight-lipped groan of pain.  
She started moving it faster; smiling down at him.  
"You're stabbing me with the Tenchi-ken."

Ryoko sat there for a moment or so, staring off into space, her hand still massaging the article. "You're right."  
"Get off me."  
"Oh _TENCHI _!" A wail of near-anguish. "We've got something here, and you're trying to get away from it again!"  
With well-rehearsed skill Tenchi slid himself out from under the pirate's body and righted himself. She stared up at him from the position that, a few moments ago, could have been one of the most erotic in Tenchi's life, up to that moment anyway. Somehow he didn't feel very impressed.  
"No, we don't," said Tenchi. "Last night didn't happen."  
"What didn't happen?"  
"You, me and Ayeka."  
Ryoko nodded. "You're right. We can pretend Ayeka wasn't a part of it."  
"No!" Tenchi cried. "None of it happened, period. I didn't sleep with you. I didn't do that. We can just pretend it didn't happen and go back to how it was before."  
Ryoko stared at him, then slowly began to nod. "I get it. You want Ayeka and you want me to forget about it all."  
"NO! I don't _want_ Ayeka. I want you both to forget about it. I want to pretend it never happened."  
He blinked and suddenly Ryoko was behind him, one arm wrapped around him, the other stroking his hair. "Why?"  
"Because it would be better if it was like that."  
Her mouth pressed close to his ear. Blew in it gently. "For who?"  
"Don't be silly, Ryoko."  
She gave another long blow, and he felt himself tense again. "For who?"  
"For us all."  
"I don't think it would." She rested her chin on his shoulder. "We wouldn't be able to do this anymore..."  
"That's really the whole point." Although he wasn't too sure whether that was entirely the point, because she was pressing a lot closer to him now, far too close and his chest was beginning to tighten and the world was starting to spin...  
And then, thankfully, the sound of a toilet flushing came from behind one of the thin paper doors and it opened.

The girl with black pony-tailed hair and the tight t-shirt who stepped out of the washroom looked at Tenchi and his cohort in would-be wanton love. Her eyes widened and she smiled in that polite way that you reserve for strange situations. "Hi, Tenchi," she said.  
Tenchi recognised who it was immediately. He looked at her. "Hello, Mina," he said.  
Mina Whatsername gave another strange smile and walked towards the stairs, eyes never leaving Tenchi's face. "Great party," she said.  
"Good," squeaked Tenchi. Ryoko didn't appear to be too bothered about showing affection in public. He twitched as another breath tickled his ear. "I'm glad you enjoyed it."  
"It's great you did well on your grades." Her walking had now become a sidling as she neared the wooden steps.  
Tenchi nodded. "And you too."  
"I failed them," said the girl.  
"Oh. Sorry."

There was a brief second as she lingered at the top of the stairs and looked him up and down, wide-eyed, and then she was gone.  
Tenchi broke free of the arms around him and wandered over to the brink of the stairs to see where she'd gone. He looked at Ryoko. "What was she doing here?"  
"Oh, her?" Ryoko waved her hand. "She got a bit tipsy last night and stayed over." Then her eyes closed to tiny triangles of anger. "Why? What does she mean to you?"  
"What? Ryoko!" He shook his head, the ache returning, "She's... she's not my type, okay."  
The space-pirate floated over to him and tried to grope him again, but he stepped away.  
"She didn't... do anything with Dad, did she?"  
"Ew!" Ryoko pulled a face. "Him and her? Tenchi, your mind's really in the gutter today..." She floated up again. "I like it."  
"Ryoko..."  
"Okay, okay... well, I remember a _little_ bit of a kiss. Y'know, none of them seemed to mind too much."

Tenchi felt a wave of calm press over him. "Okay," he said. "And why was she looking at me like that?"  
"Maybe she was impressed."  
"Impressed?" Tenchi turned to look at her properly. "With what?"  
He followed her gaze down to his groin and blushed as he saw the massive tent that had set up in his trousers.  
"Is that-" she started, and her cheeks slightly rouged.  
"The sword," Tenchi finished for her. He reached into his pocket and removed the hilt, which had been digging into the inside of his thigh with painful strength.  
He found his shoes scattered across the landing, and he picked them up before starting for his room.

Ryoko watched him go and wished he wouldn't play so hard to get all the time. But then again, it was now only a matter of waiting...  
She watched until the bedroom door had closed, before hugging herself as tightly as she could and span around, lifting gently into the air...  
He couldn't keep like this forever. She'd seen that in his eyes.  
Not after going that far last night.  
All he needed now was one tiny _push_ in the right direction.  
And she'd always be there to give it!

She smiled, but not without that niggling little tic of doubt at the back of her mind.

Still, she smiled.

* * * * *

It was most unfitting for a princess to engage in such acts.

Her Highness, Princess Ayeka, Crown Royalty of Jurai, Daughter of the Emperor-King Azusa and Queen Misaki, Holder of the Royal Court of Jurai and its Dependants, Colonies and Commonwealths, slid a little further into the onsen's mirrored waters and let it lap at the porcelain skin at the nape of her collarbone. Resting peacefully near her was a little floating wooden tray. A bottle of saké and a small china saucer for drinking from rested atop it, the bottle having been found in the kitchen shortly after her impromptu appearance in Tenchi's bedroom. She couldn't help by redden at that, and in response she poured herself another drink.

The very idea of it. Her... _Oh!_   
She wished her hangover would go away.

There was a pause of thought as she downed the drink and sat back, her ears and cheeks feeling far warmer than before. Nearly as warm as being entwined in Lord Tenchi's arms, she thought. Probably, anyway. There was a bit of a black-spot as to what exactly happened last night.  
Those brief flashes of remembrance were enough, however, to send her pulse racing.

It hadn't really worked out the way she had thought it would. Long nights spent in her mid-teens, hiding in her room and pretending to be revising for her tutors' frequent exams and tests, while actually really reading the explicit books she had found in Funaho's bedroom closet had drawn up a complex and systematic check-list for _that sort of thing_: illicit meetings beneath the boughs of an old tree; symbolic exchanges of flowers and rings; tender candlelit meals; gentle, yet sticky, fumblings involving too many adjectives...  
She rested her head against the onsen's side and sighed deeply.

It wasn't that she was particularly bothered about what had happened. It had been surprisingly... enjoyable, to say the least. It would have been more enjoyable if that brazen harlot of a hussy's whore hadn't been there...  
She needed another drink.  
What would her mother think? What would _father_ think? Good grief, the very idea of her doing that to Lord Tenchi would be enough to give him a coronary.  
She wondered what doing _that_ would be like and decided it would probably be even more enjoyable...

_No! _Don't think like that. Lord Tenchi is an honourable and humble gentleman. How would he feel if he could see you thinking those sort of thoughts?_  
_ _ Flattered, hopefully_.

If only that Demon hadn't been there, it would have been the most perfect day she had ever had. Ayeka's finger drew patterns in the water, the wakes rippling. Why did she always have to spoil everything? Was it her lot in life to play second to whatever Ryoko wanted? _Yosho, Sasami, Tenchi_... couldn't that wretched woman just let her have some happiness for a change?

Her finger weaved an intricate pattern of circles before she let her arm drop back down to her side. Here, alone in the onsen with only her thoughts and some saké, she could think clearly. Inside the house, around Ryoko - although she had to admit the pigeon-breasted temptress wasn't as bad as she had been before; maybe even more friendly - she could hardly allow herself any time to ponder. A second without keeping her eyes open could be the only thing between Lord Tenchi and a terrible fate. Although, now she could think clearly, that terrible fate had already come true.  
She wondered where Tenchi was, and what he was doing. Whether he was thinking the same thoughts as her.

Was he with her?

Would it really matter if he was?  
_ Of course it would.  
_ Why?  
_Wake up Ayeka! What the Devil's wrong with you? You're thinking like a loser again.  
_ What? Is this a game? Is that what this is?

Tenchi was the only person she could honestly say she had grown to love. Yosho, yes, she had loved him, but deep down she had known that it was a marriage of convenience. She had loved him because he was her brother and because he was handsome and clever and all the other things that should be found in a prospective husband.  
Lord Tenchi however. He was something different. He was not Yosho, he was unlike Yosho in a way that was fundamental, yet so intangible... even she couldn't work out what it was.  
What was it they said about true love? "If you love someone enough, you'll let them make their own decisions."  
Was that it? No matter.

Ayeka rose from the pool, water cascading from her body. Rivulets traced the contours of her body, and she grabbed the dry towel that was resting by the side, wrapping it around her as she did so.

If Tenchi was going to make a choice on the subject, then so be that.  
But she wasn't going down without a fight.  
Now, what was it she needed? Some candles would be nice; romantic music, something from Earth most likely; chocolates perhaps...  
What the hell was she thinking about? She wasn't trying to entertain one of her little fantasies here!  
Better to go to Stage 2.

She smiled, a polite but deeply hungry smile.

Still, she smiled.

_TO BE CONTINUED..._

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

(1) It's pretty bloody obvious what this means.

(2) The Great Barrier Reef of the Galaxy should not be mistaken for the Great Barrier Reef off the coast of Australia. Even though both can be seen from space, they are certainly dissimilar enough for misunderstanding to be only temporary. The same cannot be said of the Russian Kremlin and the Russian Kremlin, one of which exists in a place called Moscow on Earth while the other resides in a place called Moscow on Earth.  
The only difference between the two is that the Moscow not on Earth, but on _Earth_, is in fact a very large crater where an atomic device detonated during a conflict known as the Third World War and that the Earth it resides on is little more than a chargrilled lump of glass for very much the same reason.  
The other Moscow is a city on a beautiful planet that has never seen nor heard of anything such as hate, famine, suffering, war, pestilence or pain.

(3) Oarymgians are best summed up by the infamous words put forward by Lt. Commander Ramataki of the 2nd Imperial Diplomatic Division during the Thirty-Year War:  
"What do I think about Oarymgians? They're big, they're stupid and they can tear a man in half. I'm just glad we allied with these things before we starting picking on everyone else..."  
May his words be forever struck from official records.

(4) Except, quite obviously, in those cases when it's not.

(5) Author's Side-note: Re-watching the OVA's on DVD I noticed that Ryoko was drawn far, far more... how should we say it?... _attractively_, in the first episode as compared to later ones. What happened guys? Did the budget run out, or did you get bored?

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

**Handy Galaxy Police Rank & SO Guide:-**

The Galaxy Police uses the following descriptions to help distinguish one rank from another; 

**Marshall:-** Leaps tall buildings with a single bound. Is more powerful than a locomotive. Is faster than a speeding bullet. Walks on water. Gives policy to God.  
**Commissioner:-** Leaps relatively tall buildings with a single bound. Is more powerful than a diesel engine. Walks on water if sea is calm. Talks to God.  
**Deputy/Assistant/or Deputy Assistant Commissioner:- **Leaps relatively tall buildings with a running start. Is almost as powerful as a new diesel engine. Shuffles along water. Whines about God. Talks to Apostles. Whines about Apostles to God.  
**Captain:- **Leaps short building with a running start. Is almost as powerful as a switch engine. Walks on water in an indoor swimming pool. Is faster than a speeding BB. Talks to God if a special request is approved.  
**Commander:-** Leaps short buildings with a running start and favourable winds. Loses tug of war with locomotives. Can fire a speeding bullet. Swims well. Is occasionally addressed by God.  
**Chief Superintendent:- **Jumps hoops. Is slightly less powerful than a car. Can outrun speeding bullets. Can keep head above water. Frequently screams the name of God in morose pity.  
**Superintendent:- **Makes high marks when trying to leap buildings. Is run over by locomotives. Can sometimes handle a gun without inflicting self-injury. Talks to animals.  
**Chief Inspector:- **Runs into buildings. Recognises locomotives two out of three times. Sometimes recognises a gun. Can stay afloat if properly instructed in the use of a Mae Vest. Talks to walls.  
**Inspector:- **Falls over doorsteps when trying to enter buildings. Says, "Look at the Choo-Choo". Wets himself with a water pistol. Plays in mud puddles. Mumbles to himself.  
**Sergeant:- **Knocks on the building's door. Uses trains in order to maximise productivity. Recognises that a gun is a valuable asset in the fight against crime. Doesn't swim, uses a boat. Doesn't talk, just writes memos.  
**Constable:- **Lifts buildings and walks under them. Kicks locomotives off the track. Catches speeding bullets in his teeth and eats them. Freezes water with a single glance. Roars.

**Special Ranks**

**Detective:- **Is given to officers who have been assigned to investigative work after completing the appropriate selection and training. Detective ranks parallel uniformed ranks and range from Detective Constable to Detective Chief Superintendent. There are three special Detective ranks;  
**_Detective 1st Class_**:- Ranks between Inspector and Chief Inspector. Detective 1st Class is a special rank given only to those with exemplary records of achievement. They are assigned tasks listed under the Special Duties Charter of the GPHQ.  
**_Detective 2nd Class_**:- Ranks between Sergeant and Inspector. Only taken from those with skills or abilities designated as above that of the necessary standard. Holds precedence as a candidate for Special Duties.  
**_Assistant Detective_**:-Not a true rank _per se_. It is one given to those who have not completed the Galaxy Police Training Academy, but are assisting and learning from official Galaxy Police Officers holding a rank of Detectives 1st Class or higher.

**Investigator:- **Investigators are not a rank, but a term used to describe those assigned to Specialist Operations or Special Duties because of their skills or expertise in a field that is necessary to the case. As any rank can be designated an Investigator, the holder's official rank can be upgraded for their time spent on the case, at the behest of their superior.

**Transport-Officer** (**_Traffic Patrol_**):- Transport officers hold the same rank as their counterparts, ranging up to Superintendent, but include the prefix 'Transport'. Transport-Officers patrol specially designated areas of space, including Pan-Galactic Route 3 (P-GR3), P-GR4, P-GR7 and P-GR52. Officers also liaison with planetary police constabularies as part of the Gheind Treaty 5243.

**Trooper:-** Troopers handle the policing of specially protected reservations and areas of a similar nature. The arrest of poachers and other breaches of the Universal Animal Act are handled by Troopers, along with animal protection and the capture of dangerous creatures. All members of the Galaxy Police Veterinary Service hold the rank 'Veterinary - Trooper'.

**Ship Crews:-** From highest to lowest; Admiral of the Fleet (currently the Marshall of the GP), Admiral, Commodore, Captain, Commander, Lieutenant, Sub-Lieutenant, Mid-Shipman, Warrant Officer, Petty Officer, Able Rating, Ordinary Rating. These ranks are for crewman only, and do not include those stationed onboard a ship for other reasons, or for ships with less than three crewmen.

**Specialist Operations**

Are, as the name suggests, specialist units that deal with intelligence, security, protection of politicians, embassies and the investigation of certain categories of serious crimes, including racial and violent crime and terrorism.  
**_SO1 (Specialist Crime Unit):-_** Divided amongst its various departments, responsibilities include; Fraud Squad; Cheque & Credit Unit; Computer Crime Unit; Art & Antiques Unit; Extradition & Intergalactic Assistance Unit; Money Laundering Investigation Team; Special Enquiry Team (which handles complex arts & antique enquiries, sophisticated attacks against the banking industry, allegations of jury interference and allegations of perversion of the justice system).  
**_SO3 (Directorate of Forensic Services):-_** Responsibilities include; storage and collection of fingerprints etc.; forensic development; crime scene management; photographic services.  
**_SO4 (Child Protection):-_** Responsibilities include; child protection (in tandem with other non-police agencies); investigation into paedophiles; investigation into major paedophile rings; to aid other non-police agencies in child abuse prevention.  
**_SO8 (Advanced Actions Unit):-_** Responsibilities include; the coordination of officers in the arrest of super-beings or other highly dangerous persons; coordinating the protection of the Galaxy Academy and other areas of highly advanced learning; aiding and coordinating the Galactic Council on matters pertaining to weaponry or other scientific methods, objects or personnel that may prove a threat to the universe at large.  
**_SO11 (Serious & Organised Crime Unit):-_** Divided amongst its various departments, responsibilities include; Kidnap & Specialist Investigations Unit; Special Projects Team (which handles pan-galactic organised crime, contract killings, systematic and widespread extortion, major drug suppliers, crime groups including ethnically composed gangs and serious large scale firearms trafficking); Stolen Vehicle Unit (this unit undertakes operations against organised vehicle and heavy equipment theft by gangs where the scale of the crime means it is beyond the level which can be investigated by non-specialist means); Hostage & Extortion Unit; Anti-Piracy Unit (see SO14)  
_**SO13 (Anti-Terrorism Branch):-**_ Responsibilities include; investigation of all acts of terrorism within non-jurisdiction controlled area or if specifically asked; this includes economic terrorism, politically motivated crimes, and some cases of kidnap and extortion; taking responsibility for prevention and planning as well as running of counter-terrorist exercises for training and contingency planning purposes; providing explosives officers within GP jurisdiction areas or if specifically asked.  
**_SO14 (Anti-Piracy Unit):-_** Although a separate operations unit, SO14 comes under SO11 budget and control. Responsibilities include; the investigation into, and arrest, of known pirates; the collection of outstanding warrants on known pirates; the handling and storage of all data pertaining to pirates and their acts; the investigation into theft of matter- and energy-cells.  
_**SO15:-**_ There is no SO15. It is recommended you remember that; if you know what's good for you.  
**_SO16 (Diplomatic Protection Group):-_** Responsibilities include; providing high visibility armed protection to diplomats, their missions and residences under the Fandigo Act; providing security at police buildings, such as GPHQ and the Galactic Police Records Office; maintaining the Central Index of Privileged Persons and Diplomatic Vehicles; providing crime prevention and security advice to Galactic Council Governments; liaison between armed forces to meet obligations under the Fandigo Act (Amendment 35, Subparagraph C)  
**_SO19 (Specialist Firearms Unit):-_** Responsibilities include; leading arrests on suspects known to be armed, dangerous and willing to kill; instigating raids on buildings or areas known to contain such people; handling siege or hostage situations in which highly motivated and trained operatives are a necessity; other such operations needing highly trained and motivated armed support.

All Specialist Operations officers can be recognised by the distinctive badges that are worn on their uniforms.

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**A Guide To Last Chapters In-Jokes And Trivia:-**

Those little quips, puns and all around hidden or unknown things that you might have missed, or not even realised, the first time around...

**1.** The opening quote, "I'm hungry, let's get a taco" is from the Tarantino movie, _Reservoir Dogs_. Which also ties in with the chapter title...  
**2.** The KOCORREL pretends to be _THE DISINGENUOUS PRETEXT_, which when translated into more easily understood synonyms means 'False Alibi'.  
**3. **Kras' warning about the Kintari General Issue Blaster he is apparently armed with is a paraphrasing of the warning issued to hostages onboard a subway car in the film, _Taking Of Pelham One Two Three_. **  
4.** Colour-coded names are a double-barrelled in-joke; in _Reservoir Dogs_, the characters are given names of colours so that when they commit their diamond-heist they can't be traced. There is no Mr. Green. In the movie, _The Taking Of Pelham One Two Three_ colour-coded identities are also used. There is a Mr. Green.  
**4.** When Grimm and Orifati prepare to open the vault door, their conversation and actions are the same that take place in the Tarantino film _Pulp Fiction_. In the film, the characters open a locked briefcase and are bathed in a beautiful, glowing light. In this story, it's... well, you know.  
**5.** It's Sunday the 23rd on Earth. 'Nuff said.  
**6. **Mr. Iwajima never made it into the original story he was slated to be a key player in (_Everything Must Go_, if you really must know). Neither did he turn up in the other fic that was going to be his debut. Therefore he's been relegated to a cameo scene in a poorly-written comedy, which, to be honest, isn't good for the poor man's social status. Perhaps he'll show up in his proper form in another novelette?  
**7.** In the original draft for the scene where Tenchi and Katsuhito have tea and talk, there was a huge chunk of (now-lost) conversation which lasted quite some time longer, like some literary Energizer Bunny. Things included were; Katsuhito talking about his past wives, the fact that Tenchi should stand up to his responsibilities and a longer "Whoa! You slept with both of them!?!" response. Interestingly, the rough, hand-written version had Katsuhito attempting to commit seppuku with his bokkon. Probably.   
**8.** Have you noticed that all the Galaxy Police cruisers are named after types of precious, semi-precious or just plain stones? Obvious really. But keep your eyes peeled...

Okay, so most of those were pretty obvious, and with a severe Quentin Tarantino bent. Then again, later chapters are going to be rather more subtle: London Gangster movies and Citizen Kane anyone?

Happy hunting!

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AIC & Pioneer own Tenchi Muyo! Star Wars is owned by Lucasarts. Lock, Stock... is owned by Guy Ritchie (probably). Song names, lyrics etc. are copyright of their owner and is in no way an attack on that person or group. All things not owned by a particular company are the intellectual property of the author (Ministry Agent). Some of the information provided on the various Specialist Operations is used without permission from the Metropolitan Police website. Seeing as I pay for them, and I'm not recouping the losses off this story, I think I should be allowed to use it really. Apologies to 'alighthawk'... credit where credit's due.

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**Special Thanks To **_(Presented In Stereo) _**:**

**_You, The Reader You, The Reader_**  
_**BobR BobR**_  
L**_edzepfan Ledzepfan_**  
**_Metallica_Wedo Metallica_Wedo_**  
**_Negative-Z Negative-Z_**  
**_Koroshiya Koroshiya_**

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**METAPHYSICS, CHARACTERISATION  
AND THE NATURE OF EVIL**

Metaphysics and meta-mathematics are fun. If you don't know what I'm talking about at the moment, please bear with me; all will be revealed. If you know what metaphysics and meta-mathematics are, please watch how I cleverly prove my complete and total knowledge of the subject.

Metaphysics has taken practically every moderately sensible, seriously crack-pot and mildly amusing theory under its wing in its rather short life-span; parapsychology, meditation, tarot, telekinesis, aliens, the after-life, a rather heavy smattering of flat-Earth theorems and a heck of a lot of religion. It's the scientific equivalent of New Ager's mescaline driven scrawls on a toilet wall.  
Meta-mathematics is less fun because it involves squares that are circles and non-Euclidean angles... and if I had the choice between a thirty-round, anything-goes, doesn't end till the blood hits the canvas bout of fisty-cuffs with Lennox Lewis, or going through the pictorial rendition of Greek insanity, the sort that would make Pythagoras go for a cold shower and a lie down, I know which one I'd choose.  
Give me the gum-shield and get out of the way.

However, non-Euclidean space (or theory, or principle, or whatever else your top-notch £80,000 _per annum_ mathematics professor taught you at your Ivy League university) is good for one very important thing: It allows for some really great scenes in books. Every H.P. Lovecraft styled horror novella features at least one reference to it because, unlike 'blood and guts' horror writers, Lovecraft creeped you out with the sensible stuff:  
Triangles whose sides add up to more than 180 degrees? Eldritch cities that turn physics to silly-putty?  
That's the fun side of meta-mathematics. If I could do that, I'd start by making my boss' car exist in eight dimensions and see what happens when he attempts to get in. Then I'll start working my way up the metaphorical food-chain.  
I'm sure the newspapers and do-gooding anti-war protesters would probably complain, but when their lungs exist in a different dimensional state to their air-ways the only complaints would likely be "....." which roughly translates as "Help! He's removed my lungs from their normal dimensional state!"

One of the interesting theories that I actually enjoyed in school was dimensions. If 'X' is a length, for instance, and 'P' is a width, but '2' is also a length, what is X+2P?  
(Anybody with an ounce of mathematical skill will probably realise that makes no sense whatsoever. If you might draw your eyes to the past paragraph; I said it was 'interesting'. I didn't say I actually listened to the teacher.)  
  
We exist within a 3-dimensional universe (or 3D, to use the short-hand). That's self-explanatory. We have a height, a width and a depth or volume _ergo_ we have three dimensions. So does everything else in this universe. Except, perhaps, Tony Blair, but I think that might have something to do with non-Euclidean space and the concentric-waves of energy he creates when he flaps his arms about during 'political' speeches. I suspect the same thing with news reporters.  
In our universe we don't have any ready examples of a one-dimensional object (a single point in space), although I suppose you could say that the entire universe is made up of 1D objects if you're going to get that picky about the situation.  
On top of that, there aren't many examples of a 2D object except, perhaps, for a single line line drawn on a piece of paper. Although the graphite in fact builds up on the paper and creates a depth, the naked eye only perceives it as a width and height.  
A 3D object casts a 2D shadow so, logically, a 2D object casts a 1D shadow.

If this theory stands true (and let's face it, this is me we're talking about) a 4D object therefore casts a 3D shadow and in retrospect we could, in fact, be nothing more than the shadows of 4D creatures in a higher dimensional plain. In the same way that our shadows blindly follow us, so we may be blindly following the lead of things that exist in a universe that has more corners than a French Grand Prix track.

Now, here's where I seamlessly tie this into the principles of characterisation.

Characters are, for want of better description, shadows. They faithfully obey the whims of their creator whether through torpidity or loftiness. However, unlike real shadows, they possess something that makes them rather more: emotions.

Emotions are the only thing that separates us from animals. Animals don't claw the carpet when their spouse leaves them and takes the car; animals don't hate the neighbours because they have a bigger television than they do; animals _are not_ a seething mass of spoilt psychoses and idiosyncrasies, only one step away from feeling the last straw and burning out in some kind of rabid blood-frenzy that ends up making the News At Ten. Yet somehow writers appear to find it easier to squander their characters' emotions then to spend a little bit of time and make them interesting, sensible and more than filler. Let me explain;

The most frequent insult for a badly done character is that he (or she, but for the sake of example I will use he in the even examples and she in the odd examples. Women's libbers, please don't burn down my house) is 'two dimensional'. Cardboard cut-outs, cookie-cutter examples, archetypes, etc. etc. all of which run as analogies for the shadow principle I put forward; they follow blindly and without reason.  
The staple of a good character is one that is 3D. One that embodies all that is human, or universal if you will, in a character.  
I want to dispell that myth.  
The most basic character in any story needs a 'motivation' and a 'purpose'. You don't have to look very far for these, and this is probably where the 3D idea springs from.

When an author describe their characters, they are often asked to state a characters' motivations. A common reply might be, "The character Billy-Bob wants to become President of America." For the most part, people accept that with their nod and 'yeah' talk. In fact, becoming president is Billy-Bob's _Purpose_, **not** his motivation. His motivation may be because he was shunned as a child and now wants to get his own back on the world. It might be that he's a pro-life supporter and he wants all those screaming, aborted foetuses to stop wailing at him in the night. Maybe it's as plain as because he likes the idea of wearing a snazzy suit and getting to invite pretty secretaries to the Oval Office.

Motivation is the basic building block from which any character can be made. It is the birth, the inception, of a character and I have never met an author, however bad, who has simply left it at that. The motivation can be as simple as 'I've always hated the good guy because he has shinier teeth', to as far-reaching and complex as 'I want to prove to my father that I'm not the good-for-nothing everyone believes'. Motivation is the foundation of a character. Without a motivation he is acting towards a goal without reason. Even the man who climbs a mountain gives a reason although, deep down, he probably means more than his '_because it's there_' act. More often than not it's plain old ego.

The final part of a character is the 'Purpose'; the eventual goal of the character. If the evil-villain (TM) hates Mr. Shiny Smile because of his teeth it might be "Get my own back on Mr. Shiny Smile". The man who wants to prove himself to his father might have "Set up a top-notch fast-food chain that will demonstrate to the world that I'm not a wasteful sack of skin". They're valid purposes. They may be blasé, pig-headed, even down-right stupid... but they're purposes. Then again they might be bitter-sweat, air and light and all that hippy rubbish and still be purposes so it's a two-way process.

That's where most people leave it. They've got their Tenchi Muyo! character... who for the sake of this argument will be female. She's going to be the major villain and will be more realistic than the usual stock-character that fills the place for 'Black-Cloak and Helmet' baddies.   
She's good-looking, ferocious when roused and fights well, but her one sticky-wicket is her severe aversion to pain (which makes her different enough from Ryoko to stop plagiarism charges, natch). She likes reading romance novels (when she's not plotting the down-fall of empires) and enjoys light music and good food. She hates the Juraian Empire and spiders. Her motivation: She was outcast by Jurai; Her purpose: To depose the Emperor of Jurai and take his place!  
SHOCK-HORROR!

Well, it might look good on paper, but it doesn't work. Even with her little perks (every little personal quirk makes a character more 'real'. At least, as long as you don't go overboard) she is still a walking plot-hole, and no matter how many corks you try and plug her with... that analogy just sounds perverse. The character will feel laboured. She will appear at one point to be one person and at yet another point will be her exact opposite. Readers pick up on this quicker than a used-car salesman smells interest on a customer.  
Welcome to the world of being called a cut-out author, kids. Believe me, it ain't fun. And the editors return your stories with surprising efficiency.

Now, the 3D character; that's what we're aiming for, isn't it? The final piece of the puzzle to fit between the Motivation (beginning) and the Purpose (end). It's called Methodology, and it's surprisingly how often it's forgotten.  
Motivation is the bricks between the roof and foundations of the character. If Mr. Bad-Teeth wants to get at Mr. Shiny Smile his methodology (in true Hollywood fashion) might be "Kidnap Mr. Shiny Smile's daughter and threaten to kill her unless he smashes all his teeth out". The burger-bar builder's may be "Invest in the stock-market and using careful stocks and share management, amass a small fortune. Whereupon I will buy vast tracts of land and build burger-bars on them." Then again, it might be "I will tear down orphanages and build burger-bars on them". This is what makes a character, don't forget... if the builder is the protagonist he will likely be an appropriately suitable Hero-type character. If he is the antagonist, he's probably a really nasty version of Bill Gates but with an over-bite the size of the Eiffel Tower. Vice versa occurs though... and that's where characterisation really shines.  
Anyway, I'm not here to talk about which one of those is correct. I'm just talking about whether or not the character is a 'character' or a piece of story-prop.

So you've got your character have you? Go on. Write one down. Just put down a motivation, a purpose and a methodology... maybe a couple of quirks.  
Well done! You have now created your very own example of a realistic character, as given by you the fans!  
WRONG! DO NOT TRUST THE PAPER! THE PAPER LIES! IT ALWAYS LIES!

What you have now is a sham travesty of realism... much like a politician. Sure, she'll outlast the other 2D version and she'll certainly look nicer and shinier when shown off in your story. She has a name and looks and loves and hates. She motivates herself for a reason and she has a goal to reach and she knows exactly how to get there. What she doesn't have is an Evaluation.  
How do you know when you've reached your goals? I certainly don't. I sit there writing until I'm blue in the face and I still don't think I've reached what I want to reach. Evaluations are therefore the standards by which a character measures their progress in the world around them.

As an example of the concept of Evaluation, imagine two business partners who share motivations, methodologies and purposes. They might agree on what drives them (a motivation to be independent), what they want to achieve (a purpose of creating a thriving business), and how to achieve that (poster advertising as a methodology). Still, they argue if sales are up but satisfaction is low because one evaluates based on gross sales and the other evaluates based on customer satisfaction. Their poster-based methodology brings in more business because their prices are good, but repeat business is non-existent because of poor customer satisfaction. As a result, the two partners hurl crockery and insults all the time, even though they agree in all three dimensions of Motivation, Methodology, and Purpose.

If Space Demon Ryoko was a character, it would be something like this :  
**_Motivation:-_** _I was always abused and have never known real emotions._  
_**Methodology:-**_ _I'll keep Tenchi knowing that I love him using my feminine wiles and massive, heaving breasts. And sometimes I'll jump on him._  
_**Purpose:-**_ _To get Tenchi to love me. Physically and emotionally._  
_**Evaluation:-**_ _When I get Tenchi in the sack, or Ayeka's finally gone, then I'll know I can rest easy._

Then again, Tenchi might read like this :  
**_Motivation:-_** _I've always been a little nervous around women, and I'm more interested in friends anyway._  
_**Methodology:-**_ _ I'll treat both of them as fairly as I can and attempt to stop any of the usual cat-fights that go off 'round here._  
_**Purpose:-**_ _To keep both the girls happy but not make a choice._  
_**Evaluation:-**_ _When they're not trying to kill each other, and they're not trying to tear me in half, then I'll be happy._

Don't take those as gospel. They're just demonstrating what can work... and believe me, if you remove one of those dimensions the entire thing comes down faster than a Challenger shuttle. The Law of Four might seem a little silly, and I admit that when you look at it on paper, it doesn't seem any more impressive (or less impressive) than the two and three dimensional characters that were playing with earlier. The reason is this;  
All characters need conflict.

Mankind is forever in conflict. When we're not fighting wars, we're fighting starvation, or flood, or fire, or our own minds. When I go down to the corner-shop, I'm in conflict over whether to buy the Mars bar or the Twix, and a story's no different. If all everyone did was have the correct choice or the right act handed to them on a silver-platter, the story would be boring. The readers would vote using their toes and go to find a better story to read, one with a bit more action in it... even if it does mean all the main character has to mull over is a Mars bar.  
The most simple act found in conflict is violence. That's because violence is one of those pseudo-erotic things and if it's done well people love it. Violence has been around since some hairy Cro-magnon man crushed his friends skull in with a handy piece of stone and found, to his great delight, that his friend stopped talking about how much he really liked cave-paintings. I suspect the Cro-magnon man continued this trend for some time, passing it down to his young when he eventually went to the great cave in the sky.  
What the Law Of Four does is open up conflict far easier. It allows all the characters to be looked upon far more easily as 'players' rather than being employed as props for storytelling. This can be made far easier if you use one-word examples for the dimensions and then elaborate on them in parenthesis... Watch....

Ryoko again:  
_**Motivation:-**_ _Temptation (because she needs to)_  
_**Methodology:-**_ _Pro-action (jumping the gun in other words)  
**Purpose:-** Desire (obvious really)  
**Evaluation:-** Acceptance (getting him to love her)_

Tenchi gets the treatment now :  
**Motivation:- **Conscience (he's the opposite of her in that his conscience rules his ... head)  
**Methodology:- **Avoidance (he doesn't want to get involved)  
**Purpose:-** Equity (he wants... equity)  
**Evaluation:-** Trust (at the point where he can stop worrying)

There you have it... Tenchi is in confliction with Ryoko in motivation and methodology, but they're pretty close in evaluation. The purpose is really, really conflicting, which means we have serious opposites here. Imagine two people attempting to get past one another. One is Tenchi's conscience, the other Ryoko's temptation. If neither backs down, a contest of wills will occur in which both will attempt to force the other out of the way. Conflict can only result in one thing; one of them must give way.  
It may take minutes, hours, weeks or months, but barring outside influence (I'm leaving Ayeka out of this for the moment, because otherwise it gets pretty complex) one of those facets will break down and let the other pass. In any case, that will always force the character out of their purpose... most likely with a change to their motivation and therefore their methodology.

And it is conflict that bears the full force of what can be called, in its most polite form, 'atrocious examples of idiots attempting to write'.  
I've been reading for a long time (not as long as BobR though. He can remember when 'The Pickwick Papers' was released... or so I've been informed) and I've watched a lot of films.  
I've worked with a professional script-writer. Although not on scripts unfortunately.  
And if there's one thing that annoys me than a poor story, or a poor character... it's a poor villain. And the only thing that annoys me more than a poor villain is a villain, full stop.  
When people start writing they usually see their story in black and white. The character through whom we see the action is the 'Hero'. The character who stands against the character is the 'Villain' or his 'Minions'. It's interesting that this style of story is not even a cultural one, but a global one. It is therefore a deep and ingrained part of the human psyche that dictates what is 'good' and what is 'evil'.  
After a short while at writing, and the author begins to try his skills with a little more bravado, two new factors open up. One is the change from Hero-centred writing, to watching the actions of the hero via a side-kick or other secondary character (a good example being the original Arthur Conan Doyle versions of 'Sherlock Holmes', the stories not being told through the detective's eyes, but through Watson's). The other is removal of 'Villainy' from the story.  
The movement from hero to protagonist and villain to antagonist is a subtle one, but far more rewarding for the reader and most likely for the writer as well, seeing as they are no longer constrained by typified archetypes.  
The protagonist is the mover-shaker of the narrative, the guy or gal whose goal is what drives the story onwards. S/he is in search of something, as is the heart of any story, be it love, fame, fortunes or for an answer. The antagonist is the one who is directly opposed to the protagonist's goal, someone who will attempt to stop the protagonist from completing their goal. Sometimes, however, the antagonist is the instigator of their own search for a goal and it is the protagonist's goal to simply stop the antagonist... or stop the antagonist and collect their own reward.

The difference between an antagonist and a villain is that an antagonist is not opposed to the protagonist or hero. It's simply opposed to the goal. The villain wants to stop the Hero or protagonist; the antagonist wants to stop the goal, or stop the goal as well as the character. The villain's stopping of the goal is a by-product. In fact, an antagonist's wish to stop the goal might have nothing to do with the heroes or protagonists whatsoever.  
For instance, if the man who wanted to make burger-bars suddenly gets an assassin sent after him because he annoyed a rival businessman by buying the land (but the rival has no interest in getting the land now), the assassin's a villain. If however, the local tree-hugger's society is opposed to the idea of making a burger-bar and so attempts to stop the construction with their usual monkey-wrenching tactics, then they're antagonists... they're also antagonists if, in their bid to stop the construction, they let loose an assassin on the company's CEO. The aim is to stop the construction, even if it means killing him... not to kill him for the sole reason of killing.

The problem is that people are quite adamant to keep their characters as simple as possible. Personally, I can't count how many times an all-powerful alien attacks Tenchi or his consorts, takes over Jurai (does this planet actually have a defensive force, or what?) or generally stirs the ire of our lovable, big-bosomed Heroines... and Tenchi. These are all villains in the way that they are actively attacking the characters (in the taking over of Jurai part, the protagonists are needed to be wiped out because they pose a threat to the villain's power-base).  
If white-hats were a fashion statement, I'm sure they would be worn with impunity by the Tenchi Muyo! protagonists, as would black-helmets and long dark cloaks for the baddies. 

_Pour examplé_, in terms of characterisation the OVA Kagato was hardly something to set the world alight. He was sharp, clever, analytical and harsh and he was certainly dangerous, but could easily have been replaced with any other character you could fit in the space.* He really was 2D, as his motivation wasn't enigmatic, it was simply non-existent.  
"But that's okay," say the Tenchi Muyo! fans, "because he was evil."

The question has to be, "Is evil a suitable means of explaining a character and its actions in a story?" or, better yet, if we are basing the creation of a character on real-world principles , "Is evil a suitable means of explaining a person in the real world?"  
(Please do not misconstrue 'motivation' with 'motivating'. Motivation is a dimension of character. Motivating is the following of the story that the character takes.)

To be perfectly honest, the first one's a '**no**' and the second one's a '**maybe**'.

I have been told, however, that this doesn't matter as long as the character is made in the most human way possible. He needs loves and hates, little quirks and idiosyncrasies that make him all the more realistic when compared to the rest of the ensemble.  
They appear to be mistaking 'Villain' with 'Antagonist' again.

Return to Kagato. His explanations are poor at best. His search for Tsunami appears to be more of a by-product of committing harm and causing destruction. Maybe he's lying to himself about his own purpose, but it's unlikely. You'll also probably notice that this weakness in the 4-dimensional build-up is often attempted to be righted in fanfiction that examines Kagato's history in any sort of detail (I recommend BobR's "A Scientist's Tale" and a couple of ideas put forward in The Entry Plug's "Angel In The Dark" if you want to see what I mean).  
Now, look at Kagato's good points... apart from wearing some pretty funky clothes and playing the pipe-organ rather well, he hasn't got much going for him. He is the 'Evil Antagonist Archetype". He is not a villain because he's not worried about the protagonists' goals. He just wants to continue on with whatever he's doing (his attempt to retrieve Ryoko, and subsequent attack on the rest, is therefore a by-product of his quest for a goal. Notice how he even attempts to leave without causing any fuss).

However, villains aren't to be taken lightly either. Hitler was a villain to many; his invasion of Poland, Russia, France et al were seen not as a means to a goal, but rather a goal in itself. Many authors use this too, as a means by which to show off their character's realism.

Let's compare this to the real world's epitome of evil antagonist archetype: Fuhrer Adolph Hitler.  
Well, no cool clothes there (unless you're really into Brown Shirts *guffaw* *snort* *giggle*), but some things that are all too human. He loved animals, especially dogs (he contemplated having all SS squads in Germany wear bells while on night patrols, so that wild animals would hear them and be able to flee without being stepped on. He banned hunting and nearly brought back the old German ritual of holding court-bound trials for rodents that had caused mischief). He was a staunch vegetarian and anti-smoker. He was polite, humorous and a very good artist.  
If you were to change the name and forget the more famous parts of his life, he could very well be your next-door neighbour.

And then there's the question of whether what he committed was evil in the true sense: he actively believed that what he was doing was right. When he took to power in Germany, it was because the country was, literally, going to hell. When he formed an alliance with Austria, he did it because he honestly believed that he was bringing together two countries that were, in fact, the same country. When he sent troops into the demilitarised zone between France and Germany, he honestly believed that the people of the area wanted to be under German rule (and they did). When he took over Czechoslovakia for Lebensraum, he honestly believed that it would allow more space for a happier, healthier peoples. And when he started killing the Untermensch using Einsatzgruppen and gas-trucks and Zyklon-B, he honestly believed that he was doing them, and the future, a favour.  
Can you see a pattern building here? The evil man does not see himself as evil, not because he is mad or blind, but because... he isn't. He saw it as this; "If you have to kill millions in order to make the world the perfect place, is that evil?"

Very few writers want to get that up close and personal to their characters, especially if they're *open quote* EVIL *close quote*. Realism isn't how many neat little snippets about the character you can fit into a biography; it's about how the person influences and is influenced by the world around him. Why don't evil people in stories have parents? Or pets? Or go out on dates?  
Sure, they're evil but don't they have anything to do other than take over the universe and butcher the heroes? Don't they feel the need for emotional fulfillment? (most 'evil' acts are perpetrated simply because of a lack of emotional fulfillment, but it doesn't mean that people stop searching while they kill. Look at Dhamer, or Manson.)

Was Himmler evil? He was certainly human. When he visited the killing-fields of the concentration camps he was so shocked at the horror of death by firing squad he ordered that the 'more humane' method of gassing be used. He would go home from a hard day's massacring of the innocent and have a charming dinner with his wife and children, and then the next door neighbours would come around and play. Sometimes, if the visiting kids asked really nicely, they'd get to sit on the chair made out of human femur bones in his study.  
Is that evil?

I think Terry Gilliam said it best when asked about whether the honesty in his films made him anti- Lucas or anti-Spielberg;  
"I don't even know what those guys are. George Lucas thinks his films are talking about good and evil. I told him that's bullshit. Darth Vader isn't evil. Evil is Michael Palin in Brazil, who is your best friend and then betrays you. That's evil because he's not questioning the world that he's supporting..."

The villain isn't the person who wears the black-helmet and tries to stop the characters: It's the one who commits cold-blooded murder, comes home each night and tucks his kiddies into bed and then goes and watches TV.

* The original OVA had Washu not hiding her true persona by disguising herself as a young girl, but rather as a man. In the original script it was Washu in her male form that arrived and attacked the Tenchi cast, but when she was changed it's easy to see where the 'evolution' into Kagato occurred. Take note also that the weakest protagonist of Cowboy Bebop (Ed) was originally a boy... explains a lot, doesn't it?

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**Next Chapter:-**  
Ministry Agent either talks about British Crime-Flicks that you should really go out and buy, or whether it's animé fans that are destroying this intrinsic art form that we call... 'Japanimation'. Or rather, we don't.  
Then again, he might just talk about 'Fight Club'. He's not a particularly enlightening fellow.

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** Happy reviewing!**


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